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I 



THE NERVE OF FOLEY 

AND 


OTHER RAILROAD STORIES 



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[Page 21 


“ FOLEY DROPPED DOWN ON THE STEAM-CHEST AND SWUNG FAR 

OUT ” 




The Nerve of Foley 

and 

Other Railroad Stories 


BY 

FRANK H. SPEARMAN 

i\ 


ILLUSTRATED 



no 0 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 


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T' 'b 

RerTin^rrtent 



Copyright, 1900, by Fiahk H. Snt aimak. 

OKINTID IN THK UNITCO STATU Of AMCAICA 
B-* 


TO 

MY BROTHER 


































































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. 






. 




























CONTENTS 


PAGI 

THE NERVE OF FOLEY 3 

SECOND SEVENTY -SEVEN 3 1 

THE KID ENGINEER 47 

THE SKY-SCRAPER 6 ^ 

SODA-WATER SAL 91 

THE MCWILLIAMS SPECIAL Ill 

THE MILLION-DOLLAR FREIGHT-TRAIN . 1 39 

BUCKS . 163 

SANKEY’S DOUBLE HEADER 1 89 

SICLONE CLARK 213 

( 




ILLUSTRATIONS 


"FOLEY DROPPED DOWN ON THE STEAM-CHEST 

AND SWUNG FAR OUT” Frontispiece 

“THE CAB FOR A PASSING INSTANT ROSE IN THE 

AIR Facing? p. 82 

“THAT WAS BURNS’S FIRING THAT NIGHT”. . “ IOO 
“SINCLAIR WAS WHISTLING SHARPLY FOR OR- 

i* <« 


DERS 


130 




The Nerve of Foley 


j 


The Nerve of Foley 


T HERE had been rumors all winter that 
the engineers were going to strike. 
Certainly we of the operating depart- 
ment had warning enough. Yet in the 
railroad life there is always friction in some 
quarter; the railroad man sleeps like the 
soldier, with an ear alert — but just the same 
he sleeps, for with waking comes duty. 

Our engineers were good fellows. If they 
had faults, they were American faults — rash- 
ness, a liberality bordering on extravagance, 
and a headstrong, violent way of reaching 
conclusions — traits born of ability and self- 
confidence and developed by prosperity. 

One of the best men we had on a loco- 
motive was Andrew Cameron ; at the same 
time he was one of the hardest to manage, 
because he was young and headstrong. 
Andy, a big, powerful fellow, ran opposite 
3 


The Nerve of Foley 

Felix Kennedy on the Flyer. The fast 
runs require young men. If you will no- 
tice, you will rarely see an old engineer on 
a fast passenger run; even a young man 
can stand only a few years of that kind of 
work. High speed on a locomotive is a 
question of nerve and endurance — to put it 
bluntly, a question of flesh and blood. 

“ You don’t think much of this strike, 
do you, Mr. Reed ?” said Andy to me one 
night. 

“ Don’t think there’s going to be any, 
Andy.” 

He laughed knowingly. 

“ What actual grievance have the boys ?” 
I asked. 

“ The trouble’s on the East End,” he re- 
plied, evasively. 

“ Is that any reason for calling a thousand 
men out on this end ?” 

“ If one goes out, they all go.” 

“Would you go out?” 

“Would I? You bet!” 

“ A man with a home and a wife and a 
baby boy like yours ought to have more 
sense.” 


4 


The Nerve of Foley 

Getting up to leave, he laughed again 
confidently. “ That’s all right. We’ll bring 
you fellows to terms.” 

“ Maybe,” I retorted, as he closed the door. 
But I hadn’t the slightest idea they would 
begin the attempt that night. I was at home 
and sound asleep when the caller tapped on 
my window. I threw up the sash ; it was 
pouring rain and dark as a pocket. 

“What is it, Barney? A wreck?” I ex- 
claimed. 

“ Worse than that. Everything’s tied 
up.” 

“ What do you mean ?” 

“ The engineers have struck.” 

“ Struck ? What time is it ?” 

“ Half-past three. They went out at three 
o’clock.” Throwing on my clothes, I floun- 
dered behind Barney’s lantern to the depot. 
The superintendent was already in his office 
talking to the master-mechanic. 

Bulletins came in every few minutes from 
various points announcing trains tied up. 
Before long we v began to hear from the East 
End. Chicago reported all engineers out; 
Omaha wired, no trains moving. When the 
sun rose that morning our entire system, ex- 
5 


The Nerve of Foley 

tending through seven States and Territo- 
ries, was absolutely paralyzed. 

It was an astounding situation, but one 
that must be met. It meant either an ig- 
nominious surrender to the engineers or a 
fight to the death. For our part, we had only 
to wait for orders. It was just six o’clock 
when the chief train -dispatcher who was 
tapping at a key, said : 

“ Here’s something from headquarters.” 

We crowded close around him. His pen 
flew across the clip; the message was ad- 
dressed to all division superintendents. It 
was short; but at the end of it he wrote a 
name we rarely saw in our office. It was 
that of the railroad magnate we knew as 
“ the old man,” the president of the system, 
and his words were few : 

“ Move the trains.” 

“ Move the trains !” repeated the superin- 
tendent. “Yes; but trains can’t be moved 
by pinch-bars nor by main force.” 

We spent the day arguing with the strik- 
ers. They were friendly, but firm. Per- 
suasion, entreaties, threats, we exhausted, 
and ended just where we began, except that 
we had lost our tempers. The sun set with- 
6 


The Nerve of Foley 

out the turn of a wheel. The victory of the 
first day was certainly with the strikers. 

Next day it looked pretty blue around the 
depot. Not a car was moved; the engi- 
neers and firemen were a unit. But the wires 
sung hard all that day and all that night. 
Just before midnight Chicago wired that 
No. i — our big passenger-train, the Denver 
Flyer — had started out on time, with the 
superintendent of motive power as engineer 
and a wiper for fireman. The message came 
from the second vice-president. He prom- 
ised to deliver the train to our division on 
time the next evening, and he asked, “ Can 
you get it through to Denver ?” 

We looked at each other. At last all 
eyes gravitated towards Neighbor, our mas- 
ter-mechanic. 

The train-dispatcher was waiting. “ What 
shall I say?” he asked. 

The division chief of the motive power 
was a tremendously big Irishman, with a 
voice like a fog-horn. Without an instant’s 
hesitation the answer came clear, 

“ Say ‘ yes ’ !” 

Every one of us started. It was throw- 
ing the gage of battle. Our word had gone 


The Nerve of Foley 

out; the division was pledged; the fight 
was on. 

Next evening the strikers, through some 
mysterious channel, got word that the Flyer 
was expected. About nine o’clock a crowd 
of them began to gather round the depot. 

It was after one o’clock when No. i pulled 
in and the foreman of the Omaha round- 
house swung down from the locomotive cab. 
The strikers clustered around the engine 
like a swarm of angry bees ; but that 
night, though there was plenty of jeer- 
ing, there was no actual violence. When 
they saw Neighbor climb into the cab to 
take the run west there was a sullen si- 
lence. 

Next day a committee of strikers, with 
Andy Cameron, very cavalier, at their head, 
called on me. 

“ Mr. Reed,” said he, officiously, “ we’ve 
come to notify you not to run any more 
trains through here till this strike’s settled. 
The boys won’t stand it ; that’s all.” With 
that he turned on his heel to leave with his 
following. 

“ Hold on, Cameron,” I replied, raising 
my hand as I spoke ; “ that’s not quite all. 

8 


The Nerve of Foley 

I suppose you men represent your griev- 
ance committee ?” 

“ Yes, sir.” 

“ I happen to represent, in the superin- 
tendent’s absence, the management of this 
road. I simply want to say to you, and to 
your committee, that I take my orders from 
the president and the general manager — 
not from you nor anybody you represent. 
That’s all.” 

Every hour the bitterness increased. We 
got a few trains through, but we were ter- 
ribly crippled. As for freight, we made no 
pretence of moving it. Trainloads of fruit 
and meat rotted in the yards. The strikers 
grew more turbulent daily. They beat our 
new men and crippled our locomotives. 
Then our troubles with the new men were 
almost as bad. They burned out our crown 
sheets ; they got mixed up on orders all the 
time. They ran into open switches and 
into each other continually, and had us very 
nearly crazy. 

I kept tab on one of the new engineers 
for a week. He began by backing into a 
diner so hard that he smashed every dish in 
the car, and ended by running into a siding 
9 


The Nerve of Foley 

a few days later and setting two tanks of oil 
on fire, that burned up a freight depot. I 
figured he cost us forty thousand dollars 
the week he ran. Then he went back to sell- 
ing windmills. 

After this experience I was sitting in my 
office one evening, when a youngish fellow 
in a slouch-hat opened the door and stuck 
his head in. 

“ What do you want ?” I growled. 

“Are you Mr. Reed?” 

“What do you want?” 

“ I want to speak to Mr. Reed.” 

“ Well, what is it ?” 

“ Are you Mr. Reed?” 

“ Confound you, yes ! What do you 
want ?” 

“Me? I don’t want anything. I’m just 
asking, that’s all.” 

His impudence staggered me so that I 
took my feet off the desk. 

“ Heard you were looking for men,” he 
added. 

“ No,” I snapped. “ I don’t want any 
men.” 

“ Wouldn’t be any show to get on an en- 
gine, would there?” 


IO 


The Nerve of Foley 

A week earlier I should have risen and 
fallen on his neck. But there had been 
others. 

“ There’s a show to get your head broke,’ 1 
I suggested. 

“ I don’t mind that, if I get my time.” 

“ What do you know about running an 
engine ?” 

“ Run one three years.” 

“ On a threshing-machine ?” 

“ On the Philadelphia and Reading.” 

“ Who sent you in here ?” 

“ Just dropped in.” 

“ Sit down.” 

I eyed him sharply as he dropped into a 
chair. 

“When did you quit the Philadelphia 
and Reading?” 

“ About six months ago.” 

“ Fired?” 

“ Strike.” 

I began to get interested. After a few 
more questions I took him into the super- 
intendent’s office. But at the door I thought 
it well to drop a hint. 

“ Look here, my friend, if you’re a spy 
you’d better keep out of this. This man 

ii 


The Nerve of Foley 

would wring your neck as quick as he’d 
suck an orange. See ?” 

“ Let’s tackle him, anyhow,” replied the 
fellow, eying me coolly. 

I introduced him to Mr. Lancaster, and 
left them together. Pretty soon the super- 
intendent came into my office. 

“What do you make of him, Reed ?” said 
he. 

“ What do you make of him?” 

Lancaster studied a minute. 

“ Take him over to the round-house and 
see what he knows.” 

I walked over with the new find, chatting 
warily. When we reached a live engine I 
told him to look it over. He threw off his 
coat, picked up a piece of waste, and swung 
into the cab. 

“ Run her out to the switch,” said I, 
stepping up myself. 

He pinched the throttle, and we steamed 
slowly out of the house. A minute showed 
he was at home on an engine. 

“ Can you handle it ?” I asked, as he shut 
off after backing down to the round-house. 

“You use soft coal,” he replied, trying 
the injector. “ I’m used to hard. This in- 

12 


The Nerve of Foley 

jector is new to me. Guess I can work it, 
though.” 

“ What did you say your name was ?” 

“ I didn’t say.” 

“ What is it ?” I asked, curtly. 

“ Foley.” 

“ Well, Foley, if you have as much sense 
as you have gall you ought to get along. If 
you act straight, you’ll never want a job 
again as long as you live. If you don’t, you 
won’t want to live very long.” 

“ Got any tobacco ?” 

“ Here, Baxter,” said I, turning to the 
round-house foreman, “this is Foley. Give 
him a chew, and mark him up to go out on 
77 to-night. If he monkeys with anything 
around the house kill him.” 

Baxter looked at Foley, and Foley looked 
at Baxter; and Baxter not getting the to- 
bacco out quick enough, Foley reminded 
him he was waiting. 

We didn’t pretend to run freights, but I 
concluded to try the fellow on .one, feeling 
sure that if he was crooked he would ditch 
it and skip. 

So Foley ran a long string of empties 
and a car or two of rotten oranges down to 


The Nerve of Foley 

Harvard Junction that night, with one of 
the dispatchers for pilot. Under my orders 
they had a train made up at the junction 
for him to bring back to McCloud. They 
had picked up all the strays in the yards, 
including half a dozen cars of meat that 
the local board of health had condemned 
after it had laid out in the sun for two 
weeks, and a car of butter we had been shift- 
ing around ever since the beginning of the 
strike. 

When the strikers saw the stuff coming 
in next morning behind Foley they con- 
cluded I had gone crazy. 

“ What do you think of the track, Foley?” 
said I. 

“ Fair,” he replied, sitting down on my 
desk. “ Stiff hill down there by Zanesville.” 

“Any trouble to climb it?” I asked, for I 
had purposely given him a heavy train. 

“ Not with that car of butter. If you hold 
that butter another week it will climb a hill 
without any engine.” 

“ Can you handle a passenger-train ?” 

“ I guess so.” 

“ I’m going to send you west on No. i 
to-night.” 


14 


The Nerve of Foley 

“ Then you’ll have to give me a fireman. 
That guy you sent out last night is a light- 
ning-rod-peddler. The dispatcher threw 
most of the coal.” 

“ I’ll go with you myself, Foley. I can 
give you steam. Can you stand it to double 
back to-night?” 

“ I can stand it if you can.” 

When I walked into the round-house in 
the evening, with a pair of overalls on, Foley 
was in the cab getting ready for the run. 

Neighbor brought the Flyer in from the 
East. As soon as he had uncoupled and 
got out of the way we backed down with 
the 448. It was the best engine we had 
left, and, luckily for my back, an easy 
steamer. Just as we coupled to the mail- 
car a crowd of strikers swarmed out of the 
dusk. They were in an ugly mood, and 
when Andy Cameron and Bat Nicholson 
sprang up into the cab I saw we were in for 
trouble. 

“Look here, partner,” exclaimed Cam- 
eron, laying a heavy hand on Foley’s shoul- 
der ; “ you don’t want to take this train out, 
do you? You wouldn’t beat honest work- 
ing-men out of a job ?” 

*5 


The Nerve of Foley 

“ I’m not beating anybody out of a job. 
If you want to take out this train, take it 
out. If you don’t, get out of this cab.” 

Cameron was nonplussed. Nicholson, a 
surly brute, raised his fist menacingly. 

“ See here, boss,” he growled, “ we won’t 
stand no scabs on this line.” 

“ Get out of this cab.” 

“ I’ll promise you you’ll never get out of 
it alive, my buck, if you ever get into it 
again,” cried Cameron, swinging down. 
Nicholson followed, muttering angrily. I 
hoped we were out of the scrape, but, to my 
consternation, Foley, picking up his oil-can, 
got right down behind them, and began fill- 
ing his cups without the least attention to 
anybody. 

Nicholson sprang on him like a tiger. 
The onslaught was so sudden that they 
had him under their feet in a minute. I 
jumped down, and Ben Buckley, the con- 
ductor, came running up. Between us we 
gave the little fellow a life. He squirmed 
out like a cat, and backed instantly up 
against the tender. 

“ One at a time, and come on,” he cried, 
hotly. “ If it’s ten to one, and on a man’s 
16 


The Nerve of Foley 

back at that, we’ll do it different.” With a 
quick, peculiar movement of his arm he 
drew a pistol, and, pointing it squarely at 
Cameron, cried, “ Get back !” 

I caught a flash of his eye through the 
blood that streamed down his face. I 
wouldn’t have given a switch-key for the 
life of the man who crowded him at that 
minute. But just then Lancaster came up, 
and before the crowd realized it we had 
Foley, protesting angrily, back in the cab 
again. 

“ For Heaven’s sake, pull out of this 
before there’s bloodshed, Foley,” I cried; 
and, nodding to Buckley, Foley opened the 
choker. 

It was a night run and a new track to 
him. I tried to fire and pilot both, but 
after Foley suggested once or twice that if 
I would tend to the coal he would tend to 
the curves I let him find them — and he 
found them all, I thought, before we got to 
Athens. He took big chances in his run- 
ning, but there was a superb confidence in 
his bursts of speed which marked the fast 
runner and the experienced one. 

At Athens we had barely two hours to 
b 17 . 


The Nerve of Foley 

rest before doubling back. I was never 
tired in my life till I struck the pillow that 
night, but before I got it warm the caller 
routed me out again. The East-bound 
Flyer was on time, or nearly so, and when 
I got into the cab for the run back, Foley 
was just coupling on. 

“ Did you get a nap ?” I asked, as we 
pulled out. 

“ No ; we slipped an eccentric coming up, 
and I’ve been under the engine ever since. 
Say, she’s a bird, isn’t she? She’s all right. I 
couldn’t run her coming up; but I’ve touched 
up her valve motion a bit, and I’ll get ac- 
tion on her as soon as it’s daylight.” 

“ Don’t mind getting action on my ac- 
count, Foley ; I’m shy on life insurance.” 

He laughed. 

“You’re safe with me. I never killed 
man, woman, or child in my life. When I 
do, I quit the cab. Give her plenty of dia- 
monds, if you please,” he added, letting her 
out full. 

He gave me the ride of my life; but I 
hated to show scare, he was so coolly auda- 
cious himself. We had but one stop — for 
water — and after that all down grade. We 
18 


The Nerve of Foley 

bowled along as easy as ninepins, but the 
pace was a hair-raiser. After we passed 
Arickaree we never touched a thing but the 
high joints. The long, heavy train behind 
us flew round the bluffs once in a while like 
the tail of a very capricious kite ; yet some- 
how — and that’s an engineer’s magic — she 
always lit on the steel. 

Day broke ahead, and between breaths I 
caught the glory of a sunrise on the plains 
from a locomotive-cab window. When the 
smoke of the McCloud shops stained the 
horizon, remembering the ugly threats of 
the strikers, I left my seat to speak to Foley. 

“ I think you’d better swing off when you 
slow up for the yards and cut across to the 
round-house,” I cried, getting close to his 
ear, for we were on terrific speed. He 
looked at me inquiringly. “ In that way 
you won’t run into Cameron and his crowd 
at the depot,” I added. “ I can stop her all 
right.” 

He didn’t take his eyes off the track. 
“ I’ll take the train to the platform,” said he. 

“Isn’t that a crossing cut ahead?” he 
added, suddenly, as we swung round a fill 
west of town. 


19 


The Nerve of Foley 

“ Yes ; and a bad one.” 

He reached for the whistle and gave the 
long, warning screams. I set the bell-ringer 
and stooped to open the furnace door to 
cool the fire, when — chug ! 

I flew up against the water-gauges like a 
coupling-pin. The monster engine reared 
right up on her head. Scrambling to my 
feet, I saw the new man clutching the air- 
lever with both hands, and every wheel on 
the train was screeching. I jumped to his 
side and looked over his shoulder. On the 
crossing just ahead a big white horse, drag- 
ging a buggy, plunged and reared franti- 
cally. Standing on the buggy seat a baby 
boy clung bewildered to the lazyback; not 
another soul in sight. All at once the horse 
swerved sharply back; the buggy lurched 
half over; the lines seemed to be caught 
around one wheel. The little fellow clung 
on ; but the crazy horse, instead of running, 
began a hornpipe right between the deadly 
rails. 

I looked at Foley in despair. From the 
monstrous quivering leaps of the great en- 
gine I knew the drivers were in the clutch 
of the mighty air-brake; but the resistless 
20 


The Nerve of Foley 

momentum of the train was none the less 
sweeping us down at deadly speed on the 
baby. Between the two tremendous forces 
the locomotive shivered like a gigantic beast. 
I shrank back in horror; but the little man 
at the throttle, throwing the last ounce of 
air on the burning wheels, leaped from his 
box with a face transfigured. 

“ Take her 1” he cried, and, never shifting 
his eyes from the cut, he shot through his 
open window and darted like a cat along 
the running-board to the front. 

Not a hundred feet separated us from the 
crossing. I could see the baby’s curls blow- 
ing in the wind. The horse suddenly leaped 
from across the track to the side of it ; that 
left the buggy quartering with the rails, but 
not twelve inches clear. The way the 
wheels were cramped a single step ahead 
would throw the hind wheels into the train; 
a step backward would shove the front 
wheels into it. It was appalling. 

Foley, clinging with one hand to a head- 
light bracket, dropped down on the steam- 
chest and swung far out. As the cow-catch- 
er shot past, Foley’s long arm dipped into 
the buggy like the sweep of a connecting-rod, 
21 


The Nerve of Foley 

and caught the boy by the breeches. The 
impetus of our speed threw the child high 
in the air, but Foley’s grip was on the little 
overalls, and as the youngster bounded back 
he caught it close. I saw the horse give a 
leap. It sent the hind wheels into the cor- 
ner of the baggage-car. There was a crash 
like the report of a hundred rifles, and the 
buggy flew in the air. The big horse was 
thrown fifty feet ; but Foley, with a great 
light in his eyes and the baby boy in his 
arm, crawled laughing into the cab. 

Thinking he would take the engine again, 
I tried to take the baby. Take it? Well, 
I think not ! 

“ Hi! there, buster!” shouted the little en- 
gineer, wildly; “that’s a corking pair of 
breeches on you, son. I caught the kid 
right by the seat of the pants,” he called 
over to me, laughing hysterically. “ Heav- 
ens! little man, I wouldn’t ’ve struck you for 
all the gold in Alaska. I’ve got a chunk of 
a boy in Reading as much like him as a 
twin brother. What were you doing all 
alone in that buggy? Whose kid do you 
suppose it is? What’s your name, son?” 

At his question I looked at the child again 
22 


The Nerve of Foley 

— and I started. I had certainly seen him 
before ; and, had I not, his father’s features 
were too well stamped on the childish face 
for me to be mistaken. 

“ Foley,” I cried, all amaze, “ that’s Cam- 
eron’s boy — little Andy!” 

He tossed the baby the higher; he looked 
the happier ; he shouted the louder. 

“ The deuce it is ! Well, son, I’m mighty 
glad of it.” And I certainly was glad. 

In fact, mighty glad, as Foley expressed 
it, when we pulled up at the depot, and I 
saw Andy Cameron with a wicked look 
pushing to the front through the threaten- 
ing crowd. With an ugly growl he made 
for Foley. 

“ I’ve got business with you — you — ” 

“ I’ve got a little with you, son,” retorted 
Foley, stepping leisurely down from the cab. 
“ I struck a buggy back here at the first cut, 
and I hear it was yours.” Cameron’s eyes 
began to bulge. “ I guess the outfit’s dam- 
aged some — all but the boy. Here, kid,” he 
added, turning for me to hand him the child, 
“ here’s your dad.” 

The instant the youngster caught sight 
of his parent he set up a yell. Foley, laugh- 

23 


The Nerve of Foley 

ing, passed him into his astonished father’s 
arms before the latter could say a word. 
Just then a boy, running and squeezing 
through the crowd, cried to Cameron that 
his horse had run away from the house with 
the baby in the buggy, and that Mrs. Cam- 
eron was having a fit. 

'Cameron stood like one daft — and the 
boy catching sight of the baby that instant 
panted and stared in an idiotic state. 

“Andy,” said I, getting down and laying 
a hand on his shoulder, “ if these fellows 
want to kill this man, let them do it alone 
— you’d better keep out. Only this minute 
he has saved your boy’s life.” 

The sweat stood out on the big engineer’s 
forehead like dew. I told the story. Cam- 
eron tried to speak ; but he tried again and 
again before he could find his voice. 

“ Mate,” he stammered, “ you’ve been 
through a strike yourself — you know what 
it means, don’t you ? But if you’ve got a 
baby — ” he gripped the boy tighter to his 
shoulder. 

“ I have, partner; three of ’em.” 

“ Then you know what this means,” said 
Andy, huskily, putting out his hand to Fo- 
24 


The Nerve of Foley 

ley. He gripped the little man’s fist hard, 
and, turning, walked away through the 
crowd. 

Somehow it put a damper on the boys. 
Bat Nicholson was about the only man left 
who looked as if he wanted to eat somebody; 
and Foley, slinging his blouse over his 
shoulder, walked up to Bat and tapped him 
on the shoulder. 

“ Stranger,” said he, gently, “ could you 
oblige me with a chew of tobacco?” 

Bat glared at him an instant; but Foley’s 
nerve won. 

Flushing a bit, Bat stuck his hand into 
his pocket; took it out; felt hurriedly in 
the other pocket, and, with some confusion, 
acknowledged he was short. Felix Ken- 
nedy intervened with a slab, and the three 
men fell at once to talking about the acci- 
dent. 

A long time afterwards some of the strik- 
ing engineers were taken back, but none 
of those who had been guilty of actual 
violence. This barred Andy Cameron, 
who, though not worse than many others, 
had been less prudent ; and while we all felt 
sorry for him after the other boys had gone 


The Nerve of Foley 

to work, Lancaster repeatedly and positively 
refused to reinstate him. 

Several times, though, I saw Foley and 
Cameron in confab, and one day up came 
Foley to the superintendent’s office, leading 
little Andy, in his overalls, by the hand. 
They went into Lancaster’s office together, 
and the door was shut a long time. 

When they came out little Andy had a 
piece of paper in his hand. 

“ Hang on to it, son,” cautioned Foley; 
“ but you can show it to Mr. Reed if you 
want to.” 

The youngster handed me the paper. It 
was an order directing Andrew Cameron to 
report to the master-mechanic for service in 
the morning. 

I happened over at the round-house one 
day nearly a year later, when Foley was 
showing Cameron a new engine, just in 
from the East. The two men were become 
great cronies ; that day they fell to talking 
over the strike. 

“ There was never but one thing I really 
laid up against this man,” said Cameron to 
me. 


s6 


The Nerve of Foley 

“ What's that ?” asked Foley. 

“ Why, the way you shoved that pistol 
into my face the first night you took out 
No. i.” 

“ I never shoved any pistol into your 
face.” So saying, he stuck his hand into 
his pocket with the identical motion he used 
that night of the strike, and levelled at 
Andy, just as he had done then — a plug of 
tobacco. “ That’s all I ever pulled on you, 
son ; I never carried a pistol in my life.” 

Cameron looked at him, then he turned 
to me, with a tired expression : 

“ I’ve seen a good many men, with a good 
many kinds of nerve, but I’ll be splintered 
if I ever saw any one man with all kinds of 
nerve till I struck Foley.” 




. 






■ 


’ 












Second Seventy-Seven 



Second Seventy-Seven 


I T is a bad grade yet. But before the new 
work was done on the river division, Bev- 
erly Hill was a terror to trainmen. 

On rainy Sundays old switchmen in the 
Zanesville yards still tell in their shanties of 
the night the Blackwood bridge went out 
and Cameron’s stock-train got away on the 
hill, with the Denver flyer caught at the foot 
like a rat in a trap. 

Ben Buckley was only a big boy then, 
braking on freights ; I was dispatching un- 
der Alex Campbell on the West End. Ben 
was a tall, loose-jointed fellow, but gentle as 
a kitten ; legs as long as pinch-bars, yet none 
too long, running for the Beverly switch that 
night. His great chum in those days was 
Andy Cameron. Andy was the youngest 
engineer on the line. The first time I ever 
saw them together, Andy, short and chubby 


Second Seventy-Seven 

as a duck, was dancing around, half dressed, 
on the roof of the bath-house, trying to get 
away from Ben, who had the fire-hose below, 
playing on him with a two-inch stream of 
ice-water. They were up to some sort of a 
prank all the time. 

June was usually a rush month with us. 
From the coast we caught the new crop Ja- 
pan teas and the fall importations of China 
silks. California still sent her fruits, and 
Colorado was beginning cattle shipments. 
From Wyoming came sheep, and from Ore- 
gon steers ; and all these not merely in car- 
loads, but in solid trains. At times we were 
swamped. The overland traffic alone was 
enough to keep us busy ; on top of it came 
a great movement of grain from Nebraska 
that summer, and to crown our troubles a 
rate war sprang up. Every man, woman, 
and child east of the Mississippi appeared 
to have but one object in life — that was to 
get to California, and to go over our road. 
The passenger traffic burdened our resources 
to the last degree. 

I was putting on new men every day then. 
We start them at braking on freights; usu- 
32 


Second Seventy-Seven 

ally they work for years at that before they 
get a train. But when a train-dispatcher is 
short on crews he must have them, and can 
only press the best material within reach. 
Ben Buckley had not been braking three 
months when I called him up one day and 
asked him if he wanted a train. 

“ Yes, sir, I’d like one first rate. But you 
know I haven’t been braking very long, Mr. 
Reed,” said he, frankly. 

“ How long have you been in the train 
service ?” 

I spoke brusquely, though I knew, with- 
out even looking at my service -card just 
how long it was. 

“ Three months, Mr. Reed.” 

It was right to a day. 

“ I’ll probably have to send you out on 
77 this afternoon.” I saw him stiffen like 
a ramrod. “You know we’re pretty short,” 
I continued. 

“ Yes, sir.” 

“ But do you know enough to keep your 
head on your shoulders and your train on 
your orders ?” 

Ben laughed a little. “ I think I do. Will 
there be two sections to-day ?” 
c 33 


Second Seventy-Seven 

“ They’re loading eighteen cars of stock 
at Ogalalla ; if we get any hogs off the Bea- 
ver there will be two big sections. I shall 
mark you up for the first one, anyway, and 
send you out right behind the flyer. Get 
your badge and your punch from Carpenter 
— and whatever you do, Buckley, don’t get 
rattled.” 

“ No, sir; thank you, Mr. Reed.” 

But his “thank you” was so pleasant I 
couldn’t altogether ignore it ; I compromised 
with a cough. Perfect courtesy, even in the 
hands of the awkwardest boy that ever wore 
his trousers short, is a surprisingly handy 
thing to disarm gruff people with. Ben was 
undeniably awkward ; his legs were too long, 
and his trousers decidedly out of touch with 
his feet; but I turned away with the convic- 
tion that in spite of his gawkiness there was 
something to the boy. That night proved it. 

When the flyer pulled in from the West 
in the afternoon it carried two extra sleepers. 
In all, eight Pullmans, and every one of them 
loaded to the ventilators. While the train 
was changing engines and crews, the excur- 
sionists swarmed out of the hot cars to walk 
up and down the platform. They were from 
34 . 


Second Seventy-Seven 

New York, and had a band with them — as 
jolly a crowd as we ever hauled — and I no- 
ticed many boys and girls sprinkled among 
the grown folks. 

As the heavy train pulled slowly out the 
band played, the women waved handker- 
chiefs, and the boys shouted themselves 
hoarse — it was like a holiday, everybody 
seemed so happy. All I hoped, as I saw 
the smoke of the engine turn to dust on the 
horizon, was that I could get them over my 
division and their lives safely off my hands. 
For a week we had had heavy rains, and the 
bridges and track gave us worry. 

Half an hour after the flyer left, 77, the 
fast stock-freight, wound like a great snake 
around the bluff, after it. Ben Buckley, tall 
and straight as a pine, stood on the caboose. 
It was his first train, and he looked as if he 
felt it. 

In the evening I got reports of heavy 
rains east of us, and after 77 reported “ out ” 
of Turner Junction and pulled over the 
divide towards Beverly, it was storming 
hard all along the line. By the time 
they reached the hill Ben had his men out 
setting brakes — tough work on that kind 
35 


Second Seventy-Seven 

of a night; but when the big engine struck 
the bluff the heavy train was well in hand, 
and it rolled down the long grade as gently 
as a curtain. 

Ben was none too careful, for half-way 
down the hill they exploded torpedoes. 
Through the driving storm the tail-lights 
of the flyer were presently seen. As they 
pulled carefully ahead, Ben made his way 
through the mud and rain to the head end 
and found the passenger-train stalled. Just 
before them was Blackwood Creek, bank full, 
and the bridge swinging over the swollen 
stream like a grape-vine. 

At the foot of Beverly Hill there is a sid- 
ing — a long siding, once used as a sort of 
cut-off to the upper Zanesville yards. This 
side track parallels the main track for half a 
mile, and on this siding Ben, as soon as he 
saw the situation, drew in with his train so 
that it lay beside the passenger-train and 
left the main line clear behind. It then be- 
came his duty to guard the track to the 
rear, where the second section of the stock- 
train would soon be due. 

It was pouring rain and as dark as a 
pocket. He started his hind-end brakeman 
36 


Second Seventy-Seven 

back on the run with red lights and tor- 
pedoes to warn the second section well up 
the hill. Then walking across from his ca- 
boose, he got under the lee of the hind Pull- 
man sleeper to watch for the expected head- 
light. 

The storm increased in violence. It was 
not the rain driving in torrents, not the 
lightning blazing, nor the deafening crashes 
of thunder, that worried him, but the wind 
— it blew a gale. In the blare of the light- 
ning he could see the oaks which crowned 
the bluffs whip like willows in the storm. 
It swept quartering down the Beverly cut 
as if it would tear the ties from under the 
steel. Suddenly he saw, far up in the black 
sky, a star blazing ; it was the head - light 
of Second Seventy-Seven. 

A whistle cut the wind ; then another. 
It was the signal for brakes; the second 
section was coming down the steep grade. 
He wondered how far back his man had got 
with the bombs. Even as he wondered he 
saw a yellow flash below the head-light ; it 
was the first torpedo. The second section 
was already well down the top of the hill. 
Could they hold it to the bottom ? 

37 


Second Seventy-Seven 

Like an answer came shorter and sharp- 
er the whistle for brakes. Ben thought he 
knew who was on that engine ; thought he 
knew that whistle — for engineers whistle as 
differently as they talk. He still hoped and 
believed — knowing who was on the engine 
— that the brakes would hold the heavy 
load ; but he feared — 

A man running up in the rain passed 
him. Ben shouted and held up his lantern ; 
it was his head brakeman. 

“ Who’s pulling Second Seventy-Seven ?” 
he cried. 

“ Andy Cameron.” 

“ How many air cars has he got ?” 

“ Six or eight,” shouted Ben. “ It’s the 
wind, Daley — the wind. Andy can hold her 
if anybody can. But the wind ; did you ever 
see such a blow ?” 

Even while he spoke the cry for brakes 
came a third time on the storm. 

A frightened Pullman porter opened the 
rear door of the sleeper. Five hundred peo- 
ple lay in the excursion train, unconscious 
of this avalanche rolling down upon them. 

The conductor of the flyer ran up to Ben 
in a panic. 


38 


Second Seventy-Seven 

“ Buckley, they’ll telescope us.” 

M Can you pull ahead any ?” 

“ The bridge is out.” 

“ Get out your passengers,” said Ben’s 
brakeman. 

“ There’s no time,” cried the passenger 
conductor, wildly, running off. He was 
panic-stricken. The porter tried to speak. 
He took hold of the brakeman’s arm, but 
his voice died in his throat ; fear paralyzed 
him. Down the wind came Cameron’s 
whistle clamoring now in alarm. It meant 
the worst, and Ben knew it. The stock- 
train was running away. 

There were plenty of things to do if there 
was only time ; but there was hardly time to 
think. The passenger crew were running 
about like men distracted, trying to get the 
sleeping travellers out. Ben knew they 
could not possibly reach a tenth of them. In 
the thought of what it meant, an inspiration 
came like a flash. 

He seized his brakeman by the shoulder. 
For two weeks the man carried the marks 
of his hand. 

“ Daley!” he cried, in a voice like a pistol 
crack, “ get those two stockmen out of our 
39 


Second Seventy-Seven 

caboose. Quick, man ! I’m going to throw 
Cameron into the cattle.” 

It was a chance — single, desperate, but 
yet a chance — the only chance that offered 
to save the helpless passengers in his 
charge. 

If he could reach the siding switch ahead 
of the runaway train, he could throw the 
deadly catapult on the siding and into his 
own train, and so save the unconscious trav- 
ellers. Before the words were out of his 
mouth he started up the track at topmost 
speed. 

The angry wind staggered him. It blew 
out his lantern, but he flung it away, for he 
could throw the switch in the dark. A 
sharp gust tore half his rain-coat from his 
back; ripping off the rest, he ran on. 
When the wind took his breath he turned 
his back and fought for another. Blinding 
sheets of rain poured on him ; water stream- 
ing down the track caught his feet; a 
slivered tie tripped him, and, falling head- 
long, the sharp ballast cut his wrists and 
knees like broken glass. In desperate haste 
he dashed ahead again ; the head - light 
loomed before him like a mountain of flame. 

40 


Second Seventy-Seven 

There was light enough now through the 
sheets of rain that swept down on him, and 
there ahead, the train almost on it, was the 
switch. 

Could he make it ? 

A cry from the sleeping children rose in 
his heart. Another breath, an instant floun- 
dering, a slipping leap, and he had it. He 
pushed the key into the lock, threw the 
switch and snapped it, and, to make deadly 
sure, braced himself against the target-rod. 
Then he looked. 

No whistling now ; it was past that. He 
knew the fireman would have jumped. Cam- 
eron too? No, not Andy, not if the pit 
yawned in front of his pilot. 

He saw streams of fire flying from many 
wheels — he felt the glare of a dazzling light 
— and with a rattling crash the ponies shot 
into the switch. The bar in his hands rat- 
tled as if it would jump from the socket, and, 
lurching frightfully, the monster took the 
siding. A flare of lightning lit the cab as it 
shot past, and he saw Cameron leaning from 
the cab window, with face of stone, his eyes 
riveted on the gigantic drivers that threw a 
sheet of fire from the sanded rails. 

41 


Second Seventy-Seven 

“Jump!” screamed Ben, useless as he knew 
it was. What voice could live in that hell 
of noise ? What man escape from that cab 
now? 

One, two, three, four cars pounded over 
the split rails in half as many seconds. Ben, 
running dizzily for life to the right, heard 
above the roar of the storm and screech of 
the sliding wheels a ripping, tearing crash, 
the harsh scrape of escaping steam, the 
hoarse cries of the wounded cattle. And 
through the dreadful dark and the fury of 
the babel the wind howled in a gale and 
the heavens poured a flood. 

Trembling from excitement and exhaus- 
tion, Ben staggered down the main track. 
A man with a lantern ran against him ; it 
was the brakeman who had been back with 
the torpedoes; he was crying hysterically. 

They stumbled over a body. Seizing the 
lantern, Ben turned the prostrate man over 
and wiped the mud from his face. Then 
he held the lantern close, and gave a great 
cry. It was Andy Cameron — unconscious, 
true, but soon very much alive, and no 
worse than badly bruised. How the good 
God who watches over plucky engineers had 

42 


Second Seventy- Seven 

thrown him out from the horrible wreckage 
only He knew. But there Andy lay ; and 
with a lighter heart Ben headed a wrecking 
crew to begin the task of searching for any 
who might by fatal chance have been caught 
in the crash. 

And while the trainmen of the freights 
worked at the wreck the passenger-train was 
backed slowly — so slowly and so smoothly — 
up over the switch and past, over the hill 
and past, and so to Turner Junction, and 
around by Oxford to Zanesville. 

When the sun rose the earth glowed in 
the freshness of its June shower-bath. The 
flyer, now many miles from Beverly Hill, 
was speeding in towards Omaha, and moth- 
ers waking their little ones in the berths 
told them how close death had passed while 
they slept. The little girls did not quite 
understand it, though they tried very hard, 
and were very grateful to That Man, whom 
they never saw and whom they would nev- 
er see. But the little boys — never mind 
the little boys — they understood it, to the 
youngest urchin on the train, and fifty times 
their papas had to tell them how far Ben 
ran and how fast to save their lives. And 
43 _ 


Second Seventy-Seven 

one little boy — I wish I knew his name — 
went with his papa to the depot-master at 
Omaha when the flyer stopped, and gave 
him his toy watch, and asked him please to 
give it to That Man who had saved his 
mamma’s life by running so far in the rain, 
and please to tell him how much obliged he 
was — if he would be so kind. 

So the little toy watch came to our super- 
intendent, and so to me; and I, sitting at 
Cameron’s bed-side, talking the wreck over 
with Ben, gave it to him ; and the big fel- 
low looked as pleased as if it had been a 
jewelled chronometer; indeed, that was the 
only medal Ben got. 

The truth is we had no gold medals to 
distribute out on the West End in those 
days. We gave Ben the best we had, and 
that was a passenger run. But he is a great 
fellow among the railroad men. And on 
stormy nights switchmen in the Zanesville 
yards, smoking in their shanties, still tell of 
that night, that storm, and how Ben Buck- 
ley threw Second Seventy-Seven at the foot 
of Beverly Hill. 


The Kid Engineer 



The Kid Engineer 



HEN the big strike caught us at 


Zanesville we had one hundred and 


eighty engineers and firemen on 


the pay-roll. One hundred and seventy-nine 
of these men walked out One fireman — 
just one — stayed with the company; that 
was Dad Hamilton. 

“Yes,” growled Dad, combating the pro- 
tests of the strikers’ committee, “ I know it. 
I belong to your lodge. But I’ll tell you 
now — an’ I’ve told you afore — I ain’t goin* 
to strike on the company so long as Neigh- 
bor is master - mechanic on this division. 
Ain’t a-goin’ to do it, an’ you might as well 
quit. ’F you jaw here from now till Christ- 
mas ’twon’t change my mind nar a bit.” 

And they didn’t change it. Through the 
calm and through the storm — and it stormed 
hard for a while — Dad Hamilton, whenever 


The Kid Engineer 

we could supply him with an engineer, fired 
religiously. 

No other man in the service could have 
done it without getting killed ; but Dad was 
old enough to father any man among the 
strikers. Moreover, he was a giant physi- 
cally, and eccentric enough to move along 
through the heat of the crisis indifferent to 
the abuse of the other men. His gray hairs 
and his tremendous physical strength saved 
him from personal violence. 

Our master-mechanic, “ Neighbor,” was 
another big man — six feet an inch in his 
stockings, and strong as a draw-bar. Be- 
tween Neighbor and the old fireman there 
existed some sort of a bond — a liking, an 
affinity. Dad Hamilton had fired on our 
division ten years. There was no promo- 
tion for Dad; he could never be an engi- 
neer, though only Neighbor knew why. But 
his job of firing on the river division was 
sure as long as Neighbor signed the pay- 
rolls at the round-house. 

Hence there was no surprise when the 
superintendent offered him an engine, just 
after the strike, that Dad refused to take it. 

“ I’m a fireman, and Neighbor knows it. 

48 


The Kid Engineer 

I ain’t no engineer. I’ll make steam for any 
man you put in the cab with me, but I won’t 
touch a throttle for no man. I laid it down, 
and I’ll never pinch it again — an’ no offence 
t’ you, Neighbor, neither.” 

Thus ended negotiations with Dad on that 
subject; threats and entreaties were useless. 
Then, too, in spite of his professed willing- 
ness to throw coal for any man we put on 
his engine, he was continually rowing about 
the green runners we gave him. From the 
standpoint of a railroad man they were a 
tough assortment; for a fellow may be a 
good painter, or a handy man with a jack- 
plane, or an expert machinist, even, and yet 
a failure as an engine-runner. 

After we got hold of Foley, Neighbor put 
him on awhile with Dad, and the grizzled 
fireman quickly declared that Foley was the 
only man on the pay-roll who knew how to 
move a train. 

The little chap proved such a remarkable 
find that I tried hard to get some of his East- 
ern chums to come out and join him. After 
a good bit of hustling we did get half a dozen 
more Reading boys for our new corps of en- 
gine-men, but the East- End officials kept 
d 49 


The Kid Engineer 

all but one of them on their own divisions. 
That one we got because nobody on the 
East End wanted him. 

“ They’ve crimped the whole bunch, 
Foley,” said I, answering his inquiries. 
“ There’s just one fellow reported here — 
he came in on 5 this morning. Neigh- 
bor’s had a little talk with him; but he 
doesn’t think much of him. I guess we’re 
out the transportation on that fellow.” 

“ What’s his name ?” asked Foley. “ Is 
he off the Reading?” 

“Claims he is; his name is McNeal — ” 

“ McNeal ?” echoed Foley, surprised. 
“ Not Georgie McNeal?” 

“ I don’t know what his first name is ; 
he’s nothing but a boy.” 

“ Dark-complexioned fellow ?” 

“ Perhaps you’d call him that ; sort of 
soft-spoken.” 

“ Georgie NcNeal, sure’s you’re born. If 
you’ve got him you’ve got a bird. He ran 
opposite me between New York and Phila- 
delphia on the limited. I want to see him, 
right off. If it’s Georgie, you’re all right.” 

Foley’s talk went a good ways with me 
any time. When I told Neighbor about it 
5 ° 


The Kid Engineer 

he pricked up his ears. While we were 
debating, in rushed Foley with the young 
fellow — the kid — as he called him. Neigh- 
bor made another survey of the ground in 
short order : run a new line, as Foley would 
have said. The upshot of it was that Mc- 
Neal was assigned to an engine straightway. 

As luck would have it, Neighbor put the 
boy on the 244 with Dad Hamilton; and 
Dad proceeded at once to make what Foley 
termed “ a great roar.” 

“What’s the matter ?” demanded Neigh- 
bor, roughly, when the old fireman com- 
plained. 

“ If you’re goin’ to pull these trains with 
boys I guess it’s time for me to quit; I’m 
gettin* pretty old, anyhow.” 

“ What’s the matter ?” growled Neighbor, 
still surlier, knowing full well that if the old 
fellow had a good reason he would have 
blurted it out at the start. 

“Nothin’s the matter; only I’d like my 
time.” 

“ You won’t get it,” said Neighbor, rough- 
ly. “ Go back on your run. If McNeal 
don’t behave, report him to me, and he’ll 
get his time.” 


The Kid Engineer 

It was a favorite trick of Neighbor’s. 
Whenever the old fireman got to “ buck- 
ing ” about his engineer, the master -me- 
chanic threatened to discharge the engineer. 
That settled it; Dad Hamilton wouldn’t 
for the world be the cause of throwing an- 
other man out of a job, no matter how little 
he liked him. 

The old fellow went back to work molli- 
fied ; but it was evident that he and McNeal 
didn’t half get on together. The boy was 
not much of a talker; yet he did his work 
well; and Neighbor said, next to Foley, he 
was the best man we had. 

“ What’s the reason Hamilton and McNeal 
can’t hit it off, Foley?” I asked one night. 

“ They’ll get along all right after a while,” 
predicted Foley. “ You know the old man’s 
stubborn as a dun mule, ain’t he ? The in- 
jectors bother Georgie some ; they did me. 
He’ll get used to things. But Dad thinks 
he’s green — that’s what’s the matter. The 
kid is high-spirited, and seeing the old man’s 
kind of got it in for him he won’t ask him 
anything. Dad’s sore about that, too. 
Georgie won’t knuckle to anybody that 
don’t treat him right.” 

52 


The Kid Engineer 

“ You’d better tell McNeal to humor the 
old crank,” I suggested ; and I believe Foley 
did so, but it didn’t do any good. Some- 
times those things have to work themselves 
out without outside help. In the end this 
thing did, but in a way none of us looked 
for. 

About a week later Foley came into the 
office one morning very much excited. 

“ Did you hear about the boy’s getting 
pounded last night — Georgie McNeal ? It’s 
a shame the way these fellows act. Three 
of the strikers piled on him while he was 
going into the post-office, and thumped the 
life out of him. The cowardly hounds, to 
jump on a man’s back that way !” 

“ Foley,” said I, “ that’s the first time 
they’ve tackled one of Dad Hamilton’s en- 
gineers.” 

“ They’d never have done it if they 
thought there was any danger of Dad’s get- 
ting after them. They know he doesn’t 
like the boy.” 

“ It’s an outrage ; but we can’t do any- 
thing. You know that. Tell McNeal to 
keep away from the post-office. We’ll get 
his mail for him.” 


53 


The Kid Engineer 

“ I told him that this morning. He’s in 
bed, and looks pretty hard. But he won’t 
dodge those fellows. He claims it’s a free 
country,” grinned Foley. “ But I told him 
he’d get over that idea if he stuck out this 
trouble.” 

It was three days before McNeal was able 
to report for work, though he received full 
time just the same. Even then he wasn’t 
fit for duty, but he begged Neighbor for his 
run until he got it. The strikers were jubi- 
lant while the boy was laid up; but just 
what Dad thought no one could find out. 
I wanted to tell the old growler what I 
thought of him, but Foley said it wouldn’t 
do any good, and might do harm, so I held 
my peace. 

One might have thought that the injustice 
and brutality of the thing would have roused 
him; but men who have repressed them- 
selves till they are gray- headed don’t rise 
in a hurry to resent a wrong. Dad kept 
as mute as the Sphinx. When McNeal 
was ready to go out the old fireman had the 
244 shining; but if the pale face of his en- 
gineer had any effect on him, he kept it to 
himself. 


54 


The Kid Engineer 

As they rattled down the line with a long 
stock-train that night neither of them referred 
to the break in their run. Coming back next 
night the same silence hung over the cab. 
The only words that passed over the boiler- 
head were “ strickly business,” as Dad would 
say. 

At Oxford they were laid out by a Pull- 
man special. It was three o’clock in the 
morning and raining hard. Under such 
circumstances an hour seems all night. At 
last Dad himself broke the unsupportable 
silence. 

“ He’d have waited a good bit longer if 
he had waited for me to talk,” said the boy, 
telling Foley afterwards. 

“ Heard you got licked,” growled Dad, 
after tinkering with the fire for the twen- 
tieth time. 

“ I didn’t get licked,” retorted Georgie ; 
“ I got clubbed. I never had a chance to 
fight.” 

“ These fellows hate to see a boy come 
out and take a man’s job. Can’t blame ’em 
much, neither.” 

“ Whose job did I take ?” demanded 
Georgie, angrily. “ Was any one of those 
55 


The Kid Engineer 

cowards that jumped on me in the dark 
looking for work on this engine ?” 

There was nothing to say to that. Dad 
kept still. 

“You talk about men,” continued the 
young fellow. “ If I am not more of a man 
than to slug a fellow from behind, the way 
they slugged me, I’ll get off this engine and 
stay off. If that’s what you call men out 
here I don’t want to be a man. I’ll go back 
to Pennsylvania.” 

“ Why didn’t you stay there ?” growled 
Dad. 

“ Why didn’t you ?” 

Without attempting to return the shot, 
Dad pulled nervously at the chain. 

“ If I hadn’t been fool enough to go out 
on a strike I might have been running there 
yet,” continued Georgie. 

“ Ought to have kept away from the post- 
office,” grumbled Dad, after a pause. 

“ I get a letter twice a week that I think 
more of than I do of this whole road, and I 
propose to go to the post-office and get it 
without asking anybody’s permission.” 

“ They’ll pound you again.” 

Georgie looked out into the storm. 

5 * 


The Kid Engineer 

“Well, why shouldn’t they? I’ve got no 
friends.” 

“ Got a girl back in Pennsylvania ?” 

“ Yes, I’ve got a girl there,” replied the 
boy, as the rain tore at the cab window. 
“ I’ve had a girl there a good while. She’s 
gray-headed and sixty years old — that’s my 
girl — and if she can write letters to me, I 
can get them out of the post-office without 
a guardian.” 

“ There she comes,” said Dad, as the 
head- light of the Pullman special shone 
faint ahead through the mist. 

“ I’m mighty glad of it,” said Georgie, 
looking at his watch. “ Give me steam 
now, Dad, and I’ll get you home in time for 
a nap before breakfast.” 

A minute later the special shot over the 
switch, and the young runner, crowding the 
pistons a bit, started off the siding. When 
Dad, looking back for the hind-end brake- 
man to lock the switch and swing on, called 
all clear, Georgie pulled her out another 
notch, and the long train slowly gathered 
headway up the slippery track. 

As the speed increased the young man 
and the old relapsed into their usual silence. 

57 


The Kid Engineer 

The 244 was always a free steamer, but 
Georgie put her through her paces without 
any apology, and it took lots of coal to 
square the account. 

In a few minutes they were pounding 
along up through the Narrows. The track 
there follows the high bench between the 
bluffs, which sheer up on one side, and the 
river-bed, thirty feet below the grade, on the 
other. 

It is not an inviting stretch at any time 
with a big string of gondolas behind. But 
on a wet night it is the last place on the 
division where an engineer would want a 
side-rod to go wrong; and just there and 
then Georgie’s rod went very wrong indeed. 

Half-way between centres the big steel 
bar on his side, dipping then so fast you 
couldn’t have seen it even in daylight, 
snapped like a stick of licorice. The hind 
end ripped up into the cab like the nose of 
a sword-fish, tearing and smashing with ap- 
palling force and fury. 

Georgie McNeal’s seat burst under him 
as if a stick of giant-powder had exploded. 
He was jammed against the cab roof like a 
link -pin and fell sprawling, while the mon- 
.58 


The Kid Engineer 

ster steel flail threshed and tore through the 
cab with every lightning revolution of the 
great driver from which it swung. 

It was a frightful moment. Anything 
thought or done must be thought and done 
at once. It was either to stop that train — 
and quickly — or to pound along until the 
244 jumped the track, and lit in the river, 
with thirty cars of coal to cover it. 

Instantly — so Dad Hamilton afterwards 
told me — instantly the boy, scrambling to 
his feet, reached for his throttle — reached 
for it through a rain of iron blows, and stag- 
gered back with his right arm hanging like 
a broken wing from his shoulder. And back 
again after it — after the throttle with his 
left; slipping and creeping carefully this 
time up the throttle lever until, straining 
and twisting and dodging, he caught the 
latch and pushed it tightly home, Dad 
whistling vigorously the while for brakes. 

Relieved of the tremendous head on the 
cylinder the old engine calmed down 
enough to let the two men collect them- 
selves. Rapidly as the brakes could do it, 
the long train was brought up standing, and 
Georgie, helped by his fireman, dropped out 
59 


The Kid Engineer 


of the cab, and they set about disconnect- 
ing — the engineer with his one arm — the 
formidable ends of the broken rod. 

It was a slow, difficult piece of work to 
do. In spite of their most active efforts 
the rain chilled them to the marrow. The 
train-crew gave them as much help as will- 
ing hands could, which wasn’t much ; but 
by every man doing something they got 
things fixed, called in their flagmen just be- 
fore daybreak, and started home. When 
the sun rose, Georgie, grim and silent, the 
throttle in his left hand, was urging the old 
engine along on a dog -trot across the 
Blackwood flats ; and so, limping in on one 
side, the kid brought his train into the 
Zanesville yards, with Dad Hamilton un- 
able to make himself helpful enough, unable 
to show his appreciation of the skill and 
the grit that the night had disclosed in the 
kid engineer. 

The hostler waiting in the yard sprang 
into the cab with amazement on his face, 
and was just in time to lift a limp boy out 
of the old fireman’s arms and help Dad 
get him to the ground — for Georgie had 
fainted. 


60 


The Kid Engineer 

When the 244 reached the shops a few 
minutes later they photographed that cab. 
It was the worst case of rod -smashing we 
had ever seen; and the West- End shops 
have caught some pretty tough-looking cabs 
in their day. 

The boy who stopped the cyclone and 
saved his train and crew lay stretched on 
the lounge in my office waiting for the 
company surgeon. And old Dad Hamil- 
ton — crabbed, irascible old Dad Hamilton 
— flew around that boy exactly like an ex- 
cited old rooster: first bringing ice, and 
then water, and then hot coffee, and then 
fanning him with a time-table. It was 
worth a small smash-up to see it. 

The one sweep of the rod which caught 
Georgie’s arm had broken it in two places, 
and he was off duty three months. But it 
was a novelty to see that boy walk down 
to the post-office, and hear the strikers step 
up and ask how his arm was; and to see 
old Dad Hamilton tag around Zanesville 
after him was refreshing. The kid engi- 
neer had won his spurs. 


The Sky-Scraper 




I 


i 


The Sky-Scraper 


W E stood one Sunday morning in a 
group watching for her to speed 
around the Narrows. Many loco- 
motives as I have seen and ridden, a new 
one is always a wonder to me ; chokes me 
up, even, it means so much. I hear men 
rave over horses, and marvel at it when I 
think of the iron horse. I hear them chat- 
ter of distance, and my mind turns to the 
annihilator. I hear them brag of ships, and 
I think of the ship that ploughs the moun- 
tains and rivers and plains. And when they 
talk of speed — what can I think of but her ? 

As the new engine rolled into the yards 
my heart beat quicker. Her lines were too 
imposing to call strong ; they were massive, 
yet so simple you could draw them, like the 
needle snout of a collie, to a very point. 
Every bearing looked precise, every joint 
e 65 


The Sky-Scraper 

looked supple, as she swept magnificently up 
and checked herself, panting, in front of us. 

Foley was in the cab. He had been east 
on a lay-off, and so happened to bring in the 
new monster, wild, from the river shops. 

She was built in Pennsylvania, but the 
fellows on the Missouri end of our line 
thought nothing could ever safely be put 
into our hands until they had stopped it en 
route and looked it over. 

“ How does she run, Foley ?” asked 
Neighbor, gloating silently over the toy. 

“ Cool as an ice-box,” said Foley, swing- 
ing down. “ She’s a regular summer resort. 
Little stiff on the hills yet.” 

“ We’ll take that out of her,” mused 
Neighbor, climbing into the cab to look her 
over. “ Boys, this is up in a balloon,” he 
added, pushing his big head through the 
cab-window and peering down at the ninety- 
inch drivers under him. 

“ I grew dizzy once or twice looking for 
the ponies,” declared Foley, biting off a 
piece of tobacco as he hitched at his over- 
alls. “ She looms like a sky-scraper. Say, 
Neighbor, I’m to get her myself, ain’t I ?” 
asked Foley, with his usual nerve. 

66 


The Sky-Scraper 

“ When McNeal gets through with her, 
yes,” returned Neighbor, gruffly, giving her 
a thimble of steam and trying the air. 

“ What !” cried Foley, affecting surprise. 
“ You going to give her to the kid?” 

“ I am,” returned the master -mechanic 
unfeelingly, and he kept his word. 

Georgie McNeal, just reporting for work 
after the session in his cab with the loose 
end of a connecting-rod, was invited to take 
out the Sky-Scraper — 488, Class H — as she 
was listed, and Dad Hamilton of course took 
the scoop to fire her. 

“ They get everything good that’s going,” 
grumbled Foley. 

“ They are good people,” retorted Neigh- 
bor. He also assigned a helper to the old 
fireman. It was a new thing with us then, 
a fellow with a slice-bar to tickle the grate, 
and Dad, of course, kicked. He always 
kicked. If they had raised his salary he 
would have kicked. Neighbor wasted no 
words. He simply sent the helper back to 
wiping until the old fireman should cry 
enough. 

Very likely you know that a new engine 
must be regularly broken, as a horse is 
67 


The Sky-Scraper 

broken, before it is ready for steady hard 
work. And as Georgie Me Neal was not 
very strong yet, he was appointed to do the 
breaking. 

For two months it was a picnic. Light 
runs and easy lay-overs. After the smash 
at the Narrows, Hamilton had sort of taken 
the kid engineer under his wing ; and it was 
pretty generally understood that any one who 
elbowed Georgie McNeal must reckon with 
his doughty old fireman. So the two used 
to march up and down street together, as 
much like chums as a very young engineer 
and a very old fireman possibly could be. 
They talked together, walked together, and 
ate together. Foley was as jealous as a 
cat of Hamilton, because he had brought 
Georgie out West, and felt a SQrt of guardi- 
an interest in that quarter himself. Really, 
anybody would love Georgie McNeal ; old 
Dad Hamilton was proof enough of that. 

One evening, just after pay-day, I saw the 
pair in the post - office lobby getting their 
checks cashed. Presently the two stepped 
over to the money-order window ; a moment 
later each came away with a mone^-order. 

“ Is that where you leave your wealth, 
68 


The Sky-Scraper 

Georgie ?” I asked, as he came up to speak 
to me. 

“ Part of it goes there every month, Mr. 
Reed,” he smiled. “ Checks are running 
light, too, now — eh, Dad ?” 

“A young fellow like you ought to be put- 
ting money away in the bank,” said I. 

“Well, you see I have a bank back in 
Pennsylvania — a bank that is now sixty 
years old, and getting gray -headed. I 
haven’t sent her much since I’ve been on 
the relief, so I’m trying to make up a little 
now for my old mammie.” 

“ Where does yours go, Dad?” I asked. 

“ Me ?” answered the old man, evasively, 
“ I’ve got a boy back East; getting to be a 
big one, too. He’s in school. When are 
you going to give us a passenger run with 
the Sky-Scraper, Neighbor?” asked Hamil- 
ton, turning to the master-mechanic. 

“ Soon as we get this wheat, up on the 
high line, out of the way,” replied Neigh- 
bor. “ We haven’t half engines enough to 
move it, and I get a wire about every six 
hours to move it faster. Every siding’s 
blocked, clear to Belgrade. How many of 
those sixty- thousand -pound cars can you 
69 


The Sky-Scraper 

take over Beverly Hill with your Sky- 
Scraper ?” 

He was asking both men. The engineer 
looked at his chum. 

“ I reckon maybe thirty-five or forty,” said 
McNeal. “Eh, Dad?” 

“ Maybe, son,” growled Hamilton ; “ and 
break my back doing it ?” 

“ I gave you a helper once and you 
kicked him off the tender,” retorted Neigh- 
bor. 

“ Don’t want anybody raking ashes for 
me — not while I’m drawing full time,” Dad 
frowned. 

But the upshot of it was that we put the 
Sky-Scraper at hauling wheat, and within a 
week she was doing the work of a double- 
header. 

It was May, and a thousand miles east of 
us, in Chicago, there was trouble in the 
wheat -pit on the Board of Trade. You 
would hardly suspect what queer things 
that wheat scramble gave rise to, affecting 
Georgie McNeal and old man Hamilton 
and a lot. of other fellows away out on a 
railroad division on the Western plains; 
but this was the way of it: 

70 


The Sky-Scraper 

A man sitting in a little office on La 
Salle Street wrote a few words on a very 
ordinary-looking sheet of paper, and touched 
a button. That brought a colored boy, and 
he took the paper out to a young man who 
sat at the eastern end of a private wire. 

The next thing we knew, orders began to 
come in hot from the president’s office — the 
president of the road, if you please — to get 
that wheat on the high line into Chicago, 
and to get it there quickly. 

Train-men, elevator-men, superintendents 
of motive power, were spurred with special 
orders and special bulletins. Farmers, 
startled by the great prices offering, hauled 
night and day. Every old tub we had in 
the shops and on the scrap was overhauled 
and hustled into the service. The division 
danced with excitement. Every bushel of 
wheat on it must be in Chicago by the 
morning of May 31st. 

For two weeks we worked everything to 
the limit; the Sky-Scraper led any two en- 
gines on the line. Even Dad Hamilton 
was glad to cry enough, and take a helper. 
We doubled them every day, and the way 
the wheat flew over the line towards the 
7 1 


The Sky-Scraper 

lower end of Lake Michigan was appalling 
to speculators. It was a battle between two 
commercial giants — and a battle to the 
death. It shook not alone the country, it 
shook the world; but that was nothing to 
us ; our orders were simply to move the 
wheat. And the wheat moved. 

The last week found us pretty well cleaned 
up; but the high price brought grain out of 
cellars and wells, the buyers said — at least, 
it brought all the hoarded wheat, and much 
of the seed wheat, and the 28th day of the 
month found fifty cars of wheat still in the 
Zanesville yards. I was at Harvard work- 
ing on a time-card when the word came, 
and behind it a special from the general 
manager, stating there was a thousand dol- 
lars premium in it for the company, besides 
tariff, if we got that wheat into Chicago by 
Saturday morning. 

The train end of it didn’t bother me any ; 
it was the motive power that kept us study- 
ing. However, we figured that by running 
McNeal with the Sky-Scraper back wild we 
could put all the wheat behind her in one 
train. As it happened, Neighbor was at 
Harvard, too. 


72 


The Sky-Scraper 

“ Can they ever get over Beverly with 
fifty, Neighbor?” I asked, doubtfully. 

“ We’ll never know till they try it,” 
growled Neighbor. “There’s a thousand for 
the company if they do, that’s all. How’ll 
you run them ? Give them plenty of sea- 
room ; they’ll have to gallop to make it.” 

Cool and reckless planning, taking the 
daring chances, straining the flesh and 
blood, driving the steel loaded to the snap- 
ping-point; that was what it meant. But 
the company wanted results; wanted the 
prestige, and the premium, too. To gain 
them we were expected to stretch our little 
resources to the uttermost. 

I studied a minute, then turned to the 
dispatcher. 

“ Tell Norman to send them out as sec- 
ond 4; that gives the right of way over 
every wheel against them. If they can’t 
make it on that kind of schedule, it isn’t in 
the track.” 

It was extraordinary business, rather, 
sending a train of wheat through on a pas- 
senger schedule, practically, as the second 
section of our east-bound flyer ; but we took 
hair-lifting chances on the plains. 

73 


The Sky-Scraper 

It was noon when the orders were flashed. 
At three o’clock No. 4 was due to leave 
Zanesville. For three hours I kept the 
wires busy warning all operators and train- 
men, even switch-engines and yard-masters, 
of the wheat special — second 4. 

The Flyer, the first section and regular 
passenger-train, was checked out of Zanes- 
ville on time. Second 4, which meant 
Georgie McNeal, Dad, the Sky-Scraper, and 
fifty loads of wheat, reported out at 3.10. 
While we worked on our time-card, Neigh- 
bor, in the dispatcher’s office across the hall, 
figured out that the wheat-train would en- 
rich the company just eleven thousand 
dollars, tolls and premium. “ If it doesn’t 
break in two on Beverly Hill,” growled 
Neighbor, with a qualm. 

On the dispatcher’s sheet, which is a sort 
of panorama, I watched the big train whirl 
past station after station, drawing steadily 
nearer to us, and doing it, the marvel, on 
full passenger time. It was a great feat, and 
Georgie McNeal, whose nerve and brain 
were guiding the tremendous load, was 
breaking records with every mile-stone. 

They were due in Harvard at nine o’clock. 

74 


The Sky-Scraper 

The first 4, our Flyer, pulled in and out on 
time, meeting 55, the west-bound overland 
freight, at the second station east of Harvard 
— Redbud. 

Neighbor and I sat with the dispatchers, 
up in their office, smoking. The wheat- 
train was now due from the west, and, look- 
ing at my watch, I stepped to the western 
window. Almost immediately I heard the 
long peculiarly hollow blast of the Sky- 
Scraper whistling for the upper yard. 

“ She’s coming,” I exclaimed. 

The boys crowded to the window; but 
Neighbor happened to glance to the east. 

“ What’s that coming in from the junc- 
tion, Bailey ?” he exclaimed, turning to the 
local dispatcher. We looked and saw a 
head-light in the east. 

“That’s 55.” 

“ Where do they meet ?” 

“55 takes the long siding in from the 
junction ” — which was two miles east — “ and 
she ought to be on it right now,” added 
the dispatcher, anxiously, looking over the 
master-mechanic’s shoulder. 

Neighbor jumped as if a bullet had struck 
him. “ She’ll never take a siding to-night. 

7S . 


The Sky-Scraper 

She’s coming down the main track. What’s 
her orders ?” he demanded, furiously. 

“ Meeting orders for first 4 at Redbud, 
second 4 here, 78 at Glencoe. Great Jupi- 
ter!” cried the dispatcher, and his face went 
sick and scared, “ they’ve forgotten second 
4 -” 

“They’ll think of her a long time dead,” 
roared the master-mechanic, savagely, jump- 
ing to the west window. “ Throw your 
red lights ! There’s the Sky - Scraper 
now !” 

Her head shot that instant around the 
coal chutes, less than a mile away, and 55 
going dead against her. I stood like one 
palsied, my eyes glued on the burning eye 
of the big engine. As she whipped past 
a street arc -light I caught a glimpse of 
Georgie McNeal’s head out of the cab win- 
dow. He always rode bare-headed if the 
night was warm, and I knew it was he ; but 
suddenly, like a flash, his head went in. I 
knew why as well as if my eyes were his 
eyes and my thoughts his thoughts. He 
had seen red signals where he had every 
right to look for white. 

But red signals now — to stop her — to pull 
' 26 


The Sky-Scraper 

her flat on her haunches like a bronco? 
Shake a weather flag at a cyclone ! 

I saw the fire stream from her drivers ; I 
knew they were churning in the sand ; 
I knew he had twenty air cars behind him 
sliding. What of it ? 

Two thousand tons were sweeping for- 
ward like an avalanche. What did brains 
or pluck count for now with 55 dancing 
along like a school-girl right into the teeth 
of it ? 

I don’t know how the other men felt. As 
for me, my breath choked in my throat, my 
knees shook, and a deadly nausea seized me. 
Unable to avert the horrible blunder, I saw 
its hideous results. 

Darkness hid the worst of the sight; it 
was the sound that appalled. Children 
asleep in sod shanties miles from where the 
two engines reared in awful shock jumped 
in their cribs at that crash. 55’s little engine 
barely checked the Sky- Scraper. She split 
it like a banana. She bucked like a frantic 
horse, and leaped fearfully ahead. There 
was a blinding explosion, a sudden awful 
burst of steam ; the windows crashed about 
our ears, and we were dashed to the wall 
77 


The Sky-Scraper 

and floor like lead - pencils. A baggage- 
truck, whipped up from the platform below, 
came through the heavy sash and down on 
the dispatcher’s table like a brickbat, and as 
we scrambled to our feet a shower of wheat 
suffocated us. The floor heaved ; freight- 
cars slid into the depot like battering-rams. 
In the height of the confusion an oil-tank 
in the yard took fire and threw a yellow 
glare on the ghastly scene. 

I saw men get up and fall again to their 
knees ; I was shivering, and wet with sweat. 
The stairway was crushed into kindling- 
wood. I climbed out a back window, down 
on the roof of the freight platform, and so 
to the ground. There was a running to and 
fro, useless and aimless ; men were beside 
themselves. They plunged through wheat 
up to their knees at every step. All at once, 
above the frantic hissing of the buried Sky- 
Scraper and the wild calling of the car tinks, 
I heard the stentorian tones of Neighbor, 
mounted on a twisted truck, organizing the 
men at hand into a wrecking-gang. Soon 
people began running up the yard to where 
the Sky-Scraper lay, like another Samson, 
prostrate in the midst of the destruction it 
78 


The Sky-Scraper 

had wrought. Foremost among the excited 
men, covered with dirt and blood, staggered 
Dad Hamilton. 

“ Where’s McNeal ?” cried Neighbor. 

Hamilton pointed to the wreck. 

“ Why didn’t he jump?” yelled Neighbor. 

Hamilton pointed at the twisted signal- 
tower ; the red light still burned in it. 

“You changed the signals on him,” he 
cried, savagely. “ What does it mean ? We 
had rights against everything. What does 
it mean?” he raved, in a frenzy. 

Neighbor answered him never a word ; 
he only put his hand on Dad’s shoulder. 

“ Find him first ! Find him!” he repeated, 
with a strain in his voice I never heard till 
then ; and the two giants hurried away to- 
gether. When I reached the Sky-Scraper, 
buried in the thick of the smash, roaring 
like a volcano, the pair were already into 
the jam like a brace of ferrets, hunting for 
the engine crews. It seemed an hour, 
though it was much less, before they found 
any one; then they brought out 55’s fire- 
man. Neighbor found him. But his back 
was broken. Back again they wormed 
through twisted trucks, under splintered 
79 


The Sky-Scraper 

beams — in and around and over — choked 
with heat, blinded by steam, shouting as 
they groped, listening for word or cry or 
gasp. 

Soon we heard Dad’s voice in a different 
cry — one that meant everything; and the 
wreckers, turning like beavers through a 
dozen blind trails, gathered all close to the 
big fireman. He was under a great piece 
of the cab where none could follow, and he 
was crying for a bar. They passed him a 
bar ; other men, careless of life and limb, 
tried to crawl under and in to him, but he 
warned them back. Who but a man baked 
twenty years in an engine cab could stand 
the steam that poured on him where he 
lay? 

Neighbor, just outside, flashing a light, 
heard the labored strain of his breathing, 
saw him getting half up, bend to the bar, 
and saw the iron give like lead in his hands 
as he pried mightily. 

Neighbor heard, and told me long after- 
wards, how the old man flung the bar away 
with an imprecation, and cried for one to 
help him ; for a minute meant a life now — 
the boy lying pinned under the shattered 
80 


The Sky-Scraper 

cab was roasting in a jet of live steam. The 
master-mechanic crept in. 

By signs Dad told him what to do, and 
then, getting on his knees, crawled straight 
into the dash of the white jet — crawled into 
it, and got the cab on his shoulders. 

Crouching an instant, the giant muscles 
of his back set in a tremendous effort. The 
wreckage snapped and groaned, the knotted 
legs slowly and painfully straightened, the 
cab for a passing instant rose in the air, and 
in that instant Neighbor dragged Georgie 
McNeal from out the vise of death, and 
passed him, like a pinch - bar, to the men 
waiting next behind. Then Neighbor pulled 
Dad back, blind now and senseless. When 
they got the old fireman out he made a 
pitiful struggle to pull himself together. 
He tried to stand up, but the sweat broke 
over him and he sank in a heap at Neigh- 
bor’s feet. 

That was the saving of Georgie McNeal, 
and out there they will still tell you about 
that lift of Dad Hamilton’s. 

We put him on the cot at the hospital 
next to his engineer. Georgie, dreadfully 
bruised and scalded, came on fast in spite 

F 81 


The Sky-Scraper 

of his hurts. But the doctor said Dad had 
wrenched a tendon in that frightful effort, 
and he lay there a very sick and very old 
man long after the young engineer was up 
and around telling of his experience. 

“When we cleared the chutes I saw white 
signals, I thought,” he said to me at Dad’s 
bedside. “ I knew we had the right of way 
over everything. It was a hustle, anyway, 
on that schedule, Mr. Reed ; you know 
that; an awful hustle, with our load. I 
never choked her a notch to run the yards ; 
didn’t mean to do it with the Junction 
grade to climb just ahead of us. But I 
looked out again, and, by hokey ! I thought 
I’d gone crazy, got color-blind — red signals ! 
Of course I thought I must have been 
wrong the first time I looked. I choked 
her, I threw the air, I dumped the gravel. 
Heavens ! she never felt it ! I couldn’t 
figure how we were wrong, but there was 
the red light. I yelled, ‘ Jump, Dad!’ and 
he yelled, ‘Jump, son !’ Didn’t you, Dad? 

“ He jumped; but I wasn’t ever going to 
jump and my engine going full against a 
red lamp. Not much. 

“ I kind of dodged down behind the head ; 

82 








The Sky-Scraper 

when she struck it was biff, and she jumped 
about twenty feet up straight She didn’t ? 
Well, it seemed like it. Then it was biff, 
biff, biff, one after another. With that 
train behind her she’d have gone through 
Beverly Hill. Did you ever buck snow 
with a rotary, Mr. Reed ? Well, that was 
about it, even to the rolling and hear- 
ing. Dad, want to lie down ? Le’ me get 
another pillow behind you. Isn’t that bet- 
ter? Poor Musgrave !” he added, speaking 
of the engineer of 55, who was instantly 
killed. “ He and the fireman both. Hard 
lines; but I’d rather have it that way, I 
guess, if I was wrong. Eh, Dad ?” 

Even after Georgie went to work, Dad 
lay in the hospital. We knew he would 
never shovel coal again. It cost him his 
good back to lift Georgie loose, so the sur- 
geon told us ; and I could believe it, for 
when they got the jacks under the cab next 
morning, and Neighbor told the wrecking- 
gang that Hamilton alone had lifted it six 
inches the night before, on his back, the 
wrecking-boss fairly snorted at the state- 
ment; but Hamilton did, just the same. 

“ Son,” muttered Dad, one night to Geor- 
83 


The Sky-Scraper 

gie, sitting with him, “ I want you to write a 
letter for me.” 

“Sure” 

“ I’ve been sending money to my boy 
back East,” explained Dad, feebly. “ I told 
you he’s in school.” 

“ I know, Dad.” 

“ I haven’t been able to send any since 
I’ve been by, but I’m going to send some 
when I get my relief. Not so much as I 
used to send. I want you to kind of ex- 
plain why.” 

“What’s his first name, Dad, and where 
does he live ?” 

“ It’s a lawyer that looks after him — a 
man that ’tends to my business back there.” 

“ Well, what’s his name?” 

“ Scaylor — Ephraim Scaylor.” 

“Scaylor?” echoed Georgie, in amaze- 
ment. 

“Yes. Why, do you know him?” 

“ Why, that’s the man mother and I had 
so much trouble with. I wouldn’t write to 
that man. He’s a rascal, Dad.” 

“ What did he ever do to you and your 
mother ?” 

“ I’ll tell you, Dad; though it’s a matter I 
84 


The Sky-Scraper 

don’t talk about much. My father had 
trouble back there fifteen or sixteen years 
ago. He was running an engine, and had 
a wreck ; there were some passengers killed. 
The dispatcher managed to throw the blame 
on father, and they indicted him for man- 
slaughter. He pretty near went crazy, and 
all of a sudden he disappeared, and we 
never heard of him from that day to this. 
But this man Scaylor, mother stuck to it, 
knew something about where father was; 
only he always denied it.” 

Trembling like a leaf, Dad raised up on 
his elbow. “ What’s your mother’s name, 
son? What’s your name?” 

Georgie looked confused. “ I’ll tell you, 
Dad; there’s nothing to be ashamed of. I 
was foolish enough, I told you once, to go 
out on a strike with the engineers down 
there. I was only a kid, and we were all 
black-listed. So I used my middle name, 
McNeal ; my full name is George McNeal 
Sinclair.” 

The old fireman made a painful effort 
to sit up, to speak, but he choked. His 
face contracted, and Georgie rose fright- 
ened. With a herculean effort the old man 
85 


The Sky-Scraper 

raised himself up and grasped Georgie’s 
hands. 

“ Son,” he gasped to the astonished boy, 

“ don’t you know me ?” 

“ Of course I know you, Dad. What’s 
the matter with you ? Lie down.” 

“ Boy, I’m your own father. My name is 
David Hamilton Sinclair. I had the trouble 
— Georgie.” He choked up like a child, and 
Georgie McNeal went white and scared; 
then he grasped the gray-haired man in his 
arms. 

When I dropped in an hour later they 
were talking hysterically. Dad was explain- 
ing how he had been sending money to 
Scaylor every month, and Georgie was con- 
tending that neither he nor his mother had 
ever seen a cent of it. But one great fact 
overshadowed all the villany that night: 
father and son were united and happy, 
and a message had already gone back to 
the old home from Georgie to his mother, 
telling her the good news. 

“And that indictment was wiped out long 
ago against father,” said Georgie to me; 
“ but that rascal Scaylor kept writing him 
for money to fight it with and to pay for my 
86 


The Sky-Scraper 

schooling — and this was the kind of school- 
ing I was getting all the time. Wouldn’t 
that kill you ?” 

I couldn’t sleep till I had hunted up 
Neighbor and told him about it ; and next 
morning we wired transportation back for 
Mrs. Sinclair to come out on. 

Less than a week afterwards a gentle 
little old woman stepped off the Flyer at 
Zanesville, and into the arms of Georgie 
Sinclair. A smart rig was in waiting, to 
which her son hurried her, and they were 
driven rapidly to the hospital. When they 
entered the old fireman’s room together the 
nurse softly closed the door behind them. 

But when they sent for Neighbor and me, 
I suppose we were the two biggest fools in 
the hospital, trying to look unconscious of 
all we saw in the faces of the group at Dad’s 
bed. 

He never got his old strength back, yet 
Neighbor fixed him out, for all that. The 
Sky-Scraper, once our pride, was so badly 
stove that we gave up hope of restoring her 
for a passenger run. So Neighbor built her 
over into a sort of a dub engine for short 
runs, stubs, and so on; and though Dad 
. 87 


The Sky-Scraper 


had vowed long ago, when unjustly con- 
demned, that he would never more touch a 
throttle, we got him to take the Sky-Scraper 
and the Acton run. 

And when Georgie, who takes the Flyer 
every other day, is off duty, he climbs into 
Dad’s cab, shoves the old gentleman aside, 
and shoots around the yard in the rejuve- 
nated Sky-Scraper at a hair-raising rate of 
speed. 

After a while the old engine got so full of 
alkali that Georgie gave her a new name — 
Soda-Water Sal — and it hangs to her yet. 
We thought the best of her had gone in the 
Harvard wreck; but there came a time 
when Dad and Soda-Water Sal showed us 
we were very much mistaken. 


Soda-Water Sal 



Soda-Water Sal 


W HEN the great engine which we 
called the Sky-Scraper came out 
of the Zanesville shops, she was 
rebuilt from pilot to tender. 

Our master -mechanic, Neighbor, had an 
idea, after her terrific collision, that she 
could not stand heavy main-line passenger 
runs, so he put her on the Acton cut-off. 
It was what railroad men call a jerk -water 
run, whatever that may be ; a little jaunt of 
ten miles across the divide connecting the 
northern division with the Denver stem. It 
was just about like running a trolley, and 
the run was given to Dad Sinclair, for after 
that lift at Oxford his back was never 
strong enough to shovel coal, and he had 
to take an engine or quit railroading. 

Thus it happened that after many years 
he took the throttle once more and ran 

91 


Soda-Water Sal 


over, twice a day, as he does yet, from 
Acton to Willow Creek. 

His boy, Georgie Sinclair, the kid en- 
gineer, took the run on the Flyer opposite 
Foley, just as soon as he got well. 

Georgie, who was never happy unless he 
had eight or ten Pullmans behind him, and 
the right of way over everything between 
Omaha and Denver, made great sport of 
his father’s little smoking-car and day- 
coach behind the big engine. 

Foley made sport of the remodelled en- 
gine. He used to stand by while the old 
engineer was oiling and ask him whether 
he thought she could catch a jack - rabbit. 
“ I mean,” Foley would say, “ if the rabbit 
was feeling well.” 

Dad Sinclair took it all grimly and quiet- 
ly; he had railroaded too long to care for 
anybody’s chaff. But one day, after the 
Sky - Scraper had gotten her flues pretty 
well chalked up with alkali, Foley insisted 
that she must be renamed. 

“ I have the only genuine sky-scraper on 
the West End now myself,” declared Foley. 
He did have a new class H engine, and she 
was awe-inspiring, in truth. “ I don’t pro- 
92 


Soda-Water Sal 


pose,” he continued, “ to have her confused 
with your old tub any longer, Dad.” 

Dad, oiling his old tub affectionately, an- 
swered never a word. 

“ She’s full of soda, isn’t she, father?” asked 
Georgie, standing by. 

“ Reckon she is, son.” 

“Full of water, I suppose?” 

“ Try to keep her that way, son.” 

“ Sal-soda, isn’t it, Dad?” 

“ Now I can’t say. As to that — I can’t 
say.” 

“We’ll call her Sal Soda, Georgie,” sug- 
gested Foley. 

“ No,” interposed Georgie; “stop a bit. I 
have it. Not Sal Soda, at all — make it 
Soda-Water Sal.” 

Then they laughed uproariously; and in 
the teeth of Dad Sinclair’s protests — for he 
objected at once and vigorously — the queer 
name stuck to the engine, and sticks yet. 

To have seen the great hulking machine 
you would never have suspected there could 
be another story left in her. Yet one there 
was ; a story of the wind. As she stood, 
too, when old man Sinclair took her on the 
Acton run, she was the best illustration I 
93 


Soda-Water Sal 


have ever seen of the adage that one can 
never tell from the looks of a frog how far 
it will jump. 

Have you ever felt the wind? Not, I 
think, unless you have lived on the seas or 
on the plains. People everywhere think 
the wind blows ; but it really blows only on 
the ocean and on the prairies. 

The summer that Dad took the Acton 
run, it blew for a month steadily. All of 
one August — hot, dry, merciless ; the de- 
spair of the farmer and the terror of train- 
men. 

It was on an August evening, with the 
gale still sweeping up from the southwest, 
that Dad came lumbering into Acton with 
his little trolley train. He had barely pulled 
up at the platform to unload his passengers 
when the station -agent, Morris Reynolds, 
coatless and hatless, rushed up to the en- 
gine ahead of the hostler and sprang into 
the cab. Reynolds was one of the quietest 
fellows in the service. To see him without 
coat or hat didn’t count for much in such 
weather ; but to see him sallow with fright 
and almost speechless was enough to stir 
even old Dad Sinclair. 

94 


Soda-Water Sal 


It was not Dad’s habit to ask questions, 
but he looked at the man in questioning 
amazement. Reynolds choked and caught 
at his breath, as he seized the engineer’s 
arm and pointed down the line. 

“ Dad,” he gasped, “ three cars of coal 
standing over there on the second spur blew 
loose a few minutes ago.” 

“ Where are they ?” 

“Where are they? Blown through the 
switch and down the line, forty miles an 
hour.” 

The old man grasped the frightened man 
by the shoulder. “What do you mean? 
How long ago? When is i due? Talk 
quick, man ! What’s the matter with you ?” 

“Not five minutes ago. No. i is due here 
in less than thirty minutes ; they’ll go into 
her sure. Dad,” cried Reynolds, all in a 
fright, “ what’ll I do ? For Heaven’s sake 
do something. I called up Riverton and 
tried to catch i, but she’d passed. I was 
too late. There’ll be a wreck, and I’m 
booked for the penitentiary. What can I 
do?” 

All the while the station -agent, panic- 
stricken, rattled on Sinclair was looking at 
95 


Soda-Water Sal 


his watch — casting it up — charting it all 
under his thick, gray, grizzled wool, fast as 
thought could compass. 

No. i headed for Acton, and her pace was 
a hustle every mile of the way ; three cars of 
coal blowing down on her, how fast he dared 
not think ; and through it all he was asking 
himself what day it was. Thursday? Up! 
Yes, Georgie, his boy, was on the Flyer No. 
i. It was his day up. If they met on a 
curve — 

“ Uncouple her!” roared Dad Sinclair, in 
a giant tone. 

“ What are you going to do ?” 

“ Burns,” thundered Dad to his fireman, 
“ give her steam, and quick, boy ! Dump 
in grease, waste, oil, everything ! Are you 
clear there ?” he cried, opening the throttle 
as he looked back. 

The old engine, pulling clear of her coach- 
es, quivered as she gathered herself under 
the steam. She leaped ahead with a swish. 
The drivers churned in the sand, bit into it 
with gritting tires, and forged ahead with 
a suck and a hiss and a roar. Before 
Reynolds had fairly gathered his wits, Sin- 
clair, leaving his train on the main track in 
96 


Soda-Water Sal 


front of the depot, was clattering over the 
switch after the runaways. The wind was 
a terror, and they had too good a start. 
But the way Soda-Water Sal took the gait 
when she once felt her feet under her made 
the wrinkled engineer at her throttle set 
his mouth with the grimness of a gamester. 
It meant the runaways — and catch them — 
or the ditch for Soda-Water Sal; and the 
throbbing old machine seemed to know it, 
for her nose hung to the steel like the 
snout of a pointer. 

He was a man of a hundred even then 
— Burns; but nobody knew it, then. We 
hadn’t thought much about Burns before. 
He was a tall, lank Irish boy, with an open 
face and a morning smile. Dad Sinclair 
took him on because nobody else would 
have him. Burns was so green that Foley 
said you couldn’t set his name afire. He 
would, so Foley said, put out a hot box just 
by blinking at it. 

But every man’s turn comes once, and it 
had come for Burns. It was Dick Burns’s 
chance now to show what manner of stuff 
was bred in his long Irish bones. It was 
his task to make the steam — if he could — 

g 97 


Soda-Water Sal 


faster than Dad Sinclair could burn it. 
What use to grip the throttle and scheme 
if Burns didn’t furnish the power, put the 
life into her heels as she raced the wind 
— the merciless, restless gale sweeping over 
the prairie faster than horse could fly be- 
fore it? 

Working smoothly and swiftly into a 
dizzy whirl, the monstrous drivers took the 
steel in leaps and bounds. Dad Sinclair, 
leaning from the cab window, gloatingly 
watched their gathering speed, pulled the 
bar up notch after notch, and fed Burns’s 
fire into the old engine’s arteries fast and 
faster than she could throw it into her steel 
hoofs. 

That was the night the West End knew 
that a greenhorn had cast his chrysalis and 
stood out a man. Knew that the honor- 
roll of our frontier division wanted one more 
name, and that it was big Dick Burns’s. Sin- 
clair hung silently desperate to the throttle, 
his eyes straining into the night ahead, and 
the face of the long Irish boy, streaked with 
smut and channelled with sweat, lit every 
minute with the glare of the furnace as he 
fed the white-hot blast that leaped and 

98 


Soda-Water Sal 


curled and foamed under the crown-sheet 
of Soda-Water Sal. 

There he stooped and sweat and swung, 
as she slewed and lurched and jerked across 
the fish-plates. Carefully, nursingly, cease- 
lessly he pushed the steam -pointer higher, 
higher, higher on the dial — and that despite 
the tremendous draughts of Dad’s throttle. 

Never a glance to the right or the left, to 
the track or the engineer. From the coal 
to the fire, the fire to the water, the water 
to the gauge, the gauge to the stack, and 
back again to the coal — that was Burns. 
Neither eyes nor ears nor muscles for any- 
thing but steam. 

Such a firing as the West End never 
saw till that night ; such a firing as the old 
engine never felt in her choking flues till 
that night; such a firing as Dad Sinclair, 
king of all West and East End firemen, 
lifted his hat to — that was Burns’s firing 
that night on Soda-Water Sal ; the night 
she chased the Acton runaways down the 
line to save Georgie Sinclair and No. i. 

It was a frightful pace — how frightful no 
one ever knew; neither old man Sinclair 
nor Dick Burns ever cared. Only, the crew 
99 


Soda-Water Sal 


of a freight, side-tracked for the approach- 
ing Flyer, saw an engine flying light ; knew 
the hunter and the quarry, for they had seen 
the runaways shoot by — saw then, a min- 
ute after, a star and a streak and a trail of 
rotten smoke fly down the wind, and she 
had come and passed and gone. 

It was just east of that siding, so Burns 
and Sinclair always maintained — but it 
measured ten thousand feet east — that they 
caught them. 

A shout from Dad brought the dripping 
fireman up standing, and looking ahead he 
saw in the blaze of their own head-light the 
string of coalers standing still ahead of 
them. So it seemed to him, their own 
speed was so great, and the runaways were 
almost equalling it. They were making 
forty miles an hour when they dashed past 
the paralyzed freight crew. 

Without waiting for orders — what orders 
did such a man need? — without a word, 
Burns crawled out of his window with a 
pin, and ran forward on the foot -board, 
clinging the best he could, as the engine 
dipped and lurched, climbed down on the 
cow-catcher, and lifted the pilot -bar to 

IOO 



THAT WAS BURNS S FIRING THAT NIGHT 








Soda-Water Sal 


couple. It was a crazy thing to attempt; 
he was much likelier to get under the pilot 
than to succeed ; yet he tried it. 

Then it was that the fine hand of Dad 
Sinclair came into play. To temper the 
speed enough, and just enough ; to push 
her nose just enough, and far enough for 
Burns to make the draw-bar of the runaway 
— that was the nicety of the big seamed 
hands on the throttle and on the air; the 
very magic of touch which, on a slender 
bar of steel, could push a hundred tons of 
flying metal up, and hold it steady in a 
play of six inches on the teeth of the gale 
that tore down behind him. 

Again and again Burns tried to couple 
and failed. Sinclair, straining anxiously 
ahead, caught sight of the headlight of No. 
i rounding O’Fallon’s bluffs. 

He cried to Burns, and, incredible though 
it seems, the fireman heard. Above all the 
infernal din, the tearing of the flanges and 
the roaring of the wind, Burns heard the 
cry; it nerved him to a supreme effort. He 
slipped the eye once more into the draw, 
and managed to drop his pin. Up went 
his hand in signal. 


IOI 


Soda-Water Sal 


Choking the steam, Sinclair threw the 
brake-shoes flaming against the big drivers. 
The sand poured on the rails, and with 
Burns up on the coalers setting brakes, the 
three great runaways were brought to with 
a jerk that would have astounded the most 
reckless scapegraces in the world. 

While the plucky fireman crept along the 
top of the freight-cars to keep from being 
blown bodily through the air, Sinclair, with 
every resource that brain and nerve and 
power could exert, was struggling to over- 
come the terrible headway of pursuer and 
pursued, driving now frightfully into the 
beaming head of No. i. 

With the Johnson bar over and the drivers 
dancing a gallop backward ; with the sand 
striking fire, and the rails burning under it ; 
with the old Sky-Scraper shivering again 
in a terrific struggle, and Burns twisting 
the heads off the brake -rods; with every 
trick of old Sinclair’s cunning, and his boy 
duplicating every one of them in the cab of 
No. i — still they came together. It was 
too fearful a momentum to overcome, when 
minutes mean miles and tons are reckoned 
by thousands. 


102 


Soda-Water Sal 


They came together; but instead of an 
appalling wreck — destruction and death — 
it was only a bump. No. i had the speed 
when they met; and it was a car of coal 
dumped a bit sudden and a nose on Geor- 
gie’s engine like a full-back’s after a centre 
rush. The pilot doubled back into the 
ponies, and the headlight was scoured with 
nut, pea, and slack; but the stack was 
hardly bruised. 

The minute they struck, Georgie Sinclair, 
making fast, and, leaping from his cab, ran 
forward in the dark, panting with rage and 
excitement. Burns, torch in hand, was him- 
self just jumping down to get forward. His 
face wore its usual grin, even when Georgie 
assailed him with a torrent of abuse. 

“ What do you mean, you red-headed lub- 
ber?” he shouted, with much the lungs of 
his father. “ What are you doing switch- 
ing coal here on the main line ?” 

In fact, Georgie called the astonished 
fireman everything he could think of, until 
his father, who was blundering forward on 
his side of the engine, hearing the voice, 
turned, and ran around behind the tender 
to take a hand himself. 

103 


Soda-Water Sal 


“ Mean ?” he roared above the blow of his 
safety. “ Mean ?” he bellowed in the teeth 
of the wind. “ Mean ? Why, you impu- 
dent, empty-headed, ungrateful rapscallion, 
what do you mean coming around here to 
abuse a man that’s saved you and your 
train from the scrap ?” 

And big Dick Burns, standing by with 
his torch, burst into an Irish laugh, fairly 
doubled up before the nonplussed boy, and 
listened with great relish to the excited 
father and excited son. It was not hard to 
understand Georgie’s amazement and an- 
ger at finding Soda-Water Sal behind three 
cars of coal half-way between stations on 
the main line and on his time — and that 
the fastest time on the division. But what 
amused Burns most was to see the im- 
perturbable old Dad pitching into his boy 
with as much spirit as the young man him- 
self showed. 

It was because both men were scared out 
of their wits; scared over their narrow es- 
cape from a frightful wreck; from having 
each killed the other, maybe — the son the 
father, and the father the son. 

For brave men do get scared ; don’t be- 

104 


Soda-Water Sal 


lieve anything else. But between the fright 
of a coward and the fright of a brave man 
there is this difference : the coward’s scare 
is apparent before the danger, that of the 
brave man after it has passed ; and Burns 
laughed with a tremendous mirth, “ at th’ 
two o’ thim a-jawin’,” as he expressed it. 

No man on the West End could turn 
on his pins quicker than Georgie Sinclair, 
though, if his hastiness misled him. When 
it all came clear he climbed into the old 
cab — the cab he himself had once gone 
against death in — and with stumbling words 
tried to thank the tall Irishman, who still 
laughed in the excitement of having won. 

And when Neighbor next day, thought- 
ful and taciturn, heard it all, he very care- 
fully looked Soda - Water Sal all over 
again. 

“ Dad,” said he, when the boys got 
through telling it for the last time, “ she’s 
a better machine than I thought she was.” 

“ There isn’t a better pulling your coach- 
es,” maintained Dad Sinclair, stoutly. 

“ I’ll put her on the main line, Dad, and 
give you the 168 for the cut-off. Hm ?” 

“The 1 68 will suit me, Neighbor; any old 
i °S 


Soda-Water Sal 


tub — eh, Foley ?” said Dad, turning to the 
cheeky engineer, who had come up in time 
to hear most of the talk. The old fellow 
had not forgotten Foley’s sneer at Soda- 
Water Sal when he rechristened her. But 
Foley, too, had changed his mind, and was 
ready to give in. 

“That’s quite right, Dad,” he acknowl- 
edged. “You can get more out of any old 
tub on the division than the rest of us fel- 
lows can get out of a Baldwin consolidated. 
I mean it, too. It’s the best thing I ever 
heard of. What are you going to do for 
Burns, Neighbor?” asked Foley, with his 
usual assurance. 

“I was thinking I would give him Soda- 
Water Sal, and put him on the right side 
of the cab for a freight run. I reckon he 
earned it last night.” 

In a few minutes Foley started off to 
hunt up Burns. 

“See here, Irish,” said he, in his off-hand 
way, “next time you catch a string of run- 
aways just remember to climb up the ladder 
and set your brakes before you couple; it 
will save a good deal of wear and tear on 
the pilot-bar — see? I hear you’re going to 
106 


Soda-Water Sal 


get a run ; don’t fall out the window when 
you get over on the right.” 

And that’s how Burns was made an en- 
gineer, and how Soda-Water Sal was res- 
cued from the disgrace of running on the 
trolley. 

















































. 

























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The McWilliams Special 







» 

1 1 I ^lilc'i r I '1 














The McWilliams Special 


I T belongs to the Stories That Never Were 
Told, this of the McWilliams Special. 
But it happened years ago, and for that 
matter McWilliams is dead. It wasn’t grief 
that killed him, either; though at one time 
his grief came uncommonly near killing us. 

It is an odd sort of a yarn, too; because 
one part of it never got to headquarters, 
and another part of it never got from head- 
quarters. 

How, for instance, the mysterious car 
was ever started from Chicago on such a 
delirious schedule, how many men in the 
service know that even yet ? 

How, for another instance, Sinclair and 
Francis took the ratty old car reeling into 
Denver with the glass shrivelled, the paint 
blistered, the hose burned, and a tire sprung 
hi 


The McWilliams Special 

on one of the Five- Nine’s drivers — how 
many headquarters slaves know that ? 

Our end of the story never went in at all. 
Never went in because it was not deemed — 
well, essential to the getting up of the an- 
nual report. We could have raised their 
hair; they could have raised our salaries; 
but they didn’t ; we didn’t. 

In telling this story I would not be mis- 
understood; ours is not the only line be- 
tween Chicago and Denver : there are 
others, I admit it. But there is only one 
line (all the same) that could have taken 
the McWilliams Special, as we did, out of 
Chicago at four in the evening and put it in 
Denver long before noon the next day. 

A communication came from a great La 
Salle Street banker to the president of our 
road. Next, the second vice-president heard 
of it; but in this way: 

“Why have you turned down Peter Mc- 
Williams’s request for a special to Denver 
this afternoon?” asked the president. 

“ He wants too much,” came back over 
the private wire. “ We can’t do it.” 

After satisfying himself on this point the 
president called up La Salle Street. 

1 12 


The McWilliams Special 

“ Our folks say, Mr. McWilliams, we sim- 
ply can’t do it.” 

“ You must do it.” 

“ When will the car be ready?” 

“ At three o’clock.” 

“ When must it be in Denver?” 

“ Ten o’clock to-morrow morning.” 

The president nearly jumped the wire. 

“ McWilliams, you’re crazy. What on 
earth do you mean?” 

The talk came back so low that the wires 
hardly caught it. There were occasional 
outbursts such as, “situation is extremely 
critical,” “ grave danger,” “ acute distress,” 
“ must help me out.” 

But none of this would ever have moved 
the president had not Peter McWilliams 
been a bigger man than most corpora- 
tions; and a personal request from Peter, 
if he stuck for it, could hardly be re- 
fused ; and for this he most decidedly 
stuck. 

“ I tell you it will turn us upside-down,” 
6tormed the president. 

“ Do you recollect,” asked Peter McWill- 
iams, “ when your infernal old pot of a road 
was busted eight years ago — you were 
h 113 


The McWilliams Special 


turned inside out then, weren’t you? and 
hung up to dry, weren’t you?” 

The president did recollect; he could not 
decently help recollecting. And he recol- 
lected how, about that same time, Peter Mc- 
Williams had one week taken up for him a 
matter of two millions floating, with a per- 
sonal check; and carried it eighteen months 
without security, when money could not be 
had in Wall Street on government bonds. 

Do you — that is, have you heretofore 
supposed that a railroad belongs to the 
stockholders? Not so; it belongs to men 
like Mr. McWilliams, who own it when 
they need it. At other times they let the 
stockholders carry it — until they want it 
again. 

“ We’ll do what we can, Peter,” replied 
the president, desperately amiable. “ Good- 
bye.” 

I am giving you only an inkling of how 
it started. Not a word as to how countless 
orders were issued, and countless schedules 
were cancelled. Not a paragraph about 
numberless trains abandoned in toto , and 
numberless others pulled and hauled and 
held and annulled. The McWilliams Spe- 


The McWilliams Special 

cial in a twinkle tore a great system into 
great splinters. 

It set master-mechanics by the ears and 
made reckless falsifiers of previously con- 
servative trainmen. It made undying ene- 
mies of rival superintendents, and incipient 
paretics of jolly train-dispatchers. It shiv- 
ered us from end to end and stem to stern, 
but it covered 1026 miles of the best steel 
in the world in rather better than twenty 
hours and a blaze of glory. 

“ My word is out,” said the president in 
his message to all superintendents, thirty 
minutes later. “ You will get your division 
schedule in a few moments. Send no rea- 
sons for inability to make it; simply deliver 
the goods. With your time -report, which 
comes by Ry. M. S., I want the names and 
records of every member of every train- 
crew and every engine-crew that haul the 
McWilliams car.” Then followed particu- 
lar injunctions of secrecy; above all, the 
newspapers must not get it. 

But where newspapers are, secrecy can 
only be hoped for — never attained. In 
spite of the most elaborate precautions to 
preserve Peter McWilliams’s secret — would 


The McWilliams Special 

you believe it? — the evening papers had 
half a column — practically the whole thing. 
Of course they had to guess at some of it, 
but for a newspaper-story it was pretty cor- 
rect, just the same. They had, to a minute, 
the time of the start from Chicago, and 
hinted broadly that the schedule was a hair- 
raiser ; something to make previous very 
fast records previous very slow records. 
And — here in a scoop was the secret — the 
train was to convey a prominent Chicago 
capitalist to the bedside of his dying son, 
Philip McWilliams, in Denver. Further, 
that hourly bulletins were being wired to 
the distressed father, and that every effort 
of science would be put forth to keep the 
unhappy boy alive until his father could 
reach Denver on the Special. Lastly, it 
was hoped by all the evening papers (to fill 
out the half first column scare) that sunrise 
would see the anxious parent well on tow- 
ards the gateway of the Rockies. 

Of course the morning papers from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific had the story re- 
peated — scare-headed, in fact — and the pub- 
lic were laughing at our people’s dogged 
refusal to confirm the report or to be inter- 
116 


The McWilliams Special 

viewed at all on the subject. The papers 
had the story, anyway. What did they care 
for our efforts to screen a private distress 
which insisted on so paralyzing a time-card 
for 1026 miles? 

When our own, the West End of the 
schedule, came over the wires there was a 
universal, a vociferous, kick. Dispatchers, 
superintendent of motive-power, train-mas- 
ter, everybody, protested. We were given 
about seven hours to cover 400 miles — the 
fastest percentage, by-the-way, on the whole 
run. 

“ This may be grief for young McWill- 
iams, and for his dad,” grumbled the chief 
dispatcher that evening, as he cribbed the 
press dispatches going over the wires about 
the Special, “but the grief is not theirs 
alone.” 

Then he made a protest to Chicago. 
What the answer was none but himself ever 
knew. It came personal, and he took it 
personally; but the manner in which he 
went to work clearing track and making a 
card for the McWilliams Special showed 
better speed than the train itself ever at- 
tempted — and he kicked no more. 

11 7 


The McWilliams Special 

After all the row, it seems incredible, but 
they never got ready to leave Chicago till 
four o’clock ; and when the McWilliams 
Special lit into our train system, it was like 
dropping a mountain-lion into a bunch of 
steers. 

Freights and extras, local passenger-trains 
even, were used to being sidetracked; but 
when it came to laying out the Flyers and 
(I whisper this) the White Mail, and the 
Manila express, the oil began to sizzle in 
the journal-boxes. The freight business, the 
passenger traffic — the mail -schedules of a 
whole railway system were actually knocked 
by the McWilliams Special into a cocked 
hat. 

From the minute it cleared Western 
Avenue it was the only thing talked of. 
Divisional headquarters and car tink shan- 
ties alike were bursting with excitement. 

On the West End we had all night to 
prepare, and at five o’clock next morning 
every man in the operating department 
was on edge. At precisely 3.58 a.m. the 
McWilliams Special stuck its nose into 
our division, and Foley — pulled off No. 1 
with the 466 — was heading her dizzy for 
118 


The McWilliams Special 

McCloud. Already the McWilliams had 
made up thirty -one minutes on the one 
hour delay in Chicago, and Lincoln threw 
her into our hands with a sort of “ There, 
now! You fellows — are you any good at 
all on the West End?” And we thought 
we were. 

Sitting in the dispatcher’s office, we tag- 
ged her down the line like a swallow. Har- 
vard, Oxford, Zanesville, Ashton — and a 
thousand people at the McCloud station 
waited for six o’clock and for Foley’s mud- 
dy cap to pop through the Blackwood bluffs ; 
watched him stain the valley maples with a 
stream of white and black, scream at the 
junction switches, tear and crash through 
the yards, and slide hissing and panting up 
under our nose, swing out of his cab, and 
look at nobody at all but his watch. 

We made it 5.59 a.m. Central Time. 
The miles, 136; the minutes, 12 1. The 
schedule was beaten — and that with the 1 36 
miles the fastest on the whole 1026. Every- 
body in town yelled except Foley ; he asked 
for a chew of tobacco, and not getting one 
handily, bit into his own piece. 

While Foley melted his weed George 


The McWilliams Special 

Sinclair stepped out of the superintendent’s 
office — he was done in a black silk shirt, 
with a blue four-in-hand streaming over his 
front — stepped out to shake hands with 
Foley, as one hostler got the 466 out of the 
way, and another backed down with a new 
Sky-Scraper, the 509. 

But nobody paid much attention to all 
this. The mob had swarmed around the 
ratty, old, blind -eyed baggage-car which, 
with an ordinary way -car, constituted the 
McWilliams Special. 

“ Now what does a man with McWill- 
iams’s money want to travel special in an 
old photograph-gallery like that for ?” asked 
Andy Cameron, who was the least bit 
huffed because he hadn’t been marked up 
for the run himself. “ You better take him 
in a cup of hot coffee, Sinkers,” suggested 
Andy to the lunch -counter boy. “You 
might get a ten-dollar bill if the old man 
isn’t feeling too badly. What do you hear 
from Denver, Neighbor?” he asked, turning 
to the superintendent of motive power. 
“ Is the boy holding out ?” 

“ I’m not worrying about the boy holding 
out; it’s whether the Five-Nine will hold out.” 

120 


The McWilliams Special 

“Aren’t you going to change engines and 
crews at Arickaree ?” 

“ Not to-day,” said Neighbor, grimly; “ we 
haven’t time.” 

Just then Sinkers rushed at the baggage- 
car with a cup of hot coffee for Mr. McWill- 
iams. Everybody, hoping to get a peep at 
the capitalist, made way. Sinkers climbed 
over the train chests which were lashed to 
the platforms and pounded on the door. 
He pounded hard, for he hoped and be- 
lieved that there was something in it. But 
he might have pounded till his coffee froze 
for all the impression it made on the sleepy 
McWilliams. 

“ Hasn’t the man trouble enough without 
tackling your chiccory?”sang out Felix Ken- 
nedy, and the laugh so discouraged Sinkers 
that he gave over and sneaked away. 

At that moment the editor of the local 
paper came around the depot corner on 
the run. He was out for an interview, and, 
as usual, just a trifle late. However, he in- 
sisted on boarding the baggage-car to ten- 
der his sympathy to McWilliams. 

The barricades bothered him, but he 
mounted them all, and began an emergency 
1 21 


The McWilliams Special 


pound on the forbidding blind door. Im- 
agine his feelings when the door was gently 
opened by a sad-eyed man, who opened the 
ball by shoving a rifle as big as a pinch-bar 
under the editorial nose. 

“My grief, Mr. McWilliams,” protested 
the interviewer, in a trembling voice, “ don’t 
imagine I want to hold you up. Our citi- 
zens are all peaceable — ” 

“Get out !” 

“Why, man, I’m not even asking for a 
subscription ; I simply want to ten — ” 

“ Get out !” snapped the man with the 
gun ; and in a foam the newsman climbed 
down. A curious crowd gathered close to 
hear an editorial version of the ten com- 
mandments revised on the spur of the mo- 
ment. Felix Kennedy said it was worth 
going miles to hear. “ That’s the coldest 
deal I ever struck on the plains, boys,” de- 
clared the editor. “ Talk about your be- 
reaved parents. If the boy doesn’t have a 
chill when that man reaches him, I miss my 
guess. He acts to me as if he was afraid 
his grief would get away before he got to 
Denver.” 

Meantime Georgie Sinclair was tying a 

*.422 


The McWilliams Special 

silk handkerchief around his neck, while 
Neighbor gave him parting injunctions. As 
he put up his foot to swing into the cab 
the boy looked for all the world like a 
jockey toe in stirrup. Neighbor glanced at 
his watch. 

“ Can you make it by eleven o’clock ?” he 
growled. 

“ Make what ?” 

“ Denver.” 

“Denver or the ditch, Neighbor,” laughed 
Georgie, testing the air. “ Are you right 
back there, Pat?” he called, as Conductor 
Francis strode forward to compare the 
Mountain Time. 

“ Right and tight, and I call it five- two- 
thirty now. What have you, Georgie ?” 

“ Five-two-thirty-two,” answered Sinclair, 
leaning from the cab window. “ And we’re 
ready.” 

“Then go!” cried Pat Francis, raising 
two fingers. 

“Go!” echoed Sinclair, and waved a back- 
ward smile to the crowd, as the pistons took 
the push and the escapes wheezed. 

A roar went up. The little engineer 
shook his cap, and with a flirting, snaking 
123 


The McWilliams Special 

slide, the McWilliams Special drew slipping 
away between the shining rails for the 
Rockies. 

Just how McWilliams felt we had no 
means of knowing ; but we knew our 
hearts would not beat freely until his in- 
fernal Special should slide safely over the 
last of the 266 miles which still lay between 
the distressed man and his unfortunate 
child. 

From McCloud to Ogalalla there is a 
good bit of twisting and slewing ; but look- 
ing east from Athens a marble dropped be- 
tween the rails might roll clear into the 
Ogalalla yards. It is a sixty-mile grade, the 
ballast of slag, and the sweetest, springiest 
bed under steel. 

To cover those sixty miles in better than 
fifty minutes was like picking them off the 
ponies; and the Five- Nine breasted the 
Morgan divide, fretting for more hills to 
climb. 

The Five-Nine — for that matter any of 
the Sky-Scrapers are built to balance ten 
or a dozen sleepers, and when you run 
them light they have a fashion of rooting 
their noses into the track. A modest up- 
124 


The McWilliams Special 

grade just about counters this tendency; 
but on a slump and a stiff clip and no tail 
to speak of, you feel as if the drivers were 
going to buck up on the ponies every once 
in a while. However, they never do, and 
Georgie whistled for Scarboro’ junction, and 
180 miles and two waters, in 198 minutes 
out of McCloud; and, looking happy, cussed 
Mr. McWilliams a little, and gave her an- 
other hatful of steam. 

It is getting down a hill, like the hills of 
the Mattaback Valley, at such a pace that 
pounds the track out of shape. The Five- 
Nine lurched at the curves like a mad 
woman, shook free with very fury, and if 
the baggage-car had not been fairly load- 
ed down with the grief of McWilliams, it 
must have jumped the rails a dozen times 
in as many minutes. 

Indeed, the fireman — it was Jerry Mac- 
Elroy — twisting and shifting between the 
tender and the furnace, looked for the first 
time grave, and stole a questioning glance 
from the steam-gauge towards Georgie. 

But yet he didn’t expect to see the boy, 
his face set ahead and down the track, 
straighten so suddenly up, sink in the lever, 
12 $ 


The McWilliams Special 

and close at the instant on the air. Jerry 
felt her stumble under his feet — caught up 
like a girl in a skipping-rope — and grab- 
bing a brace looked, like a wise stoker, for 
his answer out of his window. There far 
ahead it rose in hot curling clouds of smoke 
down among the alfalfa meadows and over 
the sweep of willows along the Mattaback 
River. The Mattaback bridge was on fire, 
with the McWilliams Special on one side 
and Denver on the other. 

Jerry MacElroy yelled — the engineer 
didn’t even look around ; only whistled an 
alarm back to Pat Francis, eased her down 
the grade a bit, like a man reflecting, and 
watched the smoke and flames that rose to 
bar the McWilliams Special out of Denver. 

The Five-Nine skimmed across the mead- 
ows without a break, and pulled up a hun- 
dred feet from the burning bridge. It was 
an old Howe truss, and snapped like pop- 
corn as the flames bit into the rotten shed. 

Pat Francis and his brakeman ran for- 
ward. Across the river they could see half 
a dozen section -men chasing wildly about 
throwing impotent buckets of water on the 
burning truss. 


126 


The McWilliams Special 

“We’re up against it, Georgie,” cried 
Francis. 

“ Not if we can get across before the 
bridge tumbles into the river,” returned 
Sinclair. 

“ You don’t mean you’d try it ?” 

“Would I? Wouldn’t IP You know 
the orders. That bridge is good for an 
hour yet. Pat, if you’re game, I’ll run it.” 

“ Holy smoke,” mused Pat Francis, who 
would have run the river without any 
bridge at all if so ordered. “ They told us 
to deliver the goods, didn’t they ?” 

“ We might as well be starting, Pat,” 
suggested Jerry MacElroy, who deprecated 
losing good time. “ There’ll be plenty of 
time to talk after we get into Denver, or 
the Mattaback.” 

“ Think quick, Pat,” urged Sinclair ; his 
safety was popping murder. 

“ Back her up, then, and let her go,” 
cried Francis; “I’d just as lief have that 
baggage-car at the bottom of the river as on 
my hands any longer.” 

There was some sharp tooting, then the 
McWilliams Special backed ; backed away 
across the meadow, halted, and screamed 
12 ? 


The McWilliams Special 

hard enough to wake the dead. Georgia 
was trying to warn the section -men. At 
that instant the door of the baggage -car 
opened and a sharp - featured young man 
peered out. 

“ What’s the row — what’s all this screech- 
ing about, conductor?” he asked, as Francis 
passed. 

“ Bridge burning ahead there.” 

“ Bridge burning !” he cried, looking ner- 
vously forward. “Well, that’s a deal. What 
you going to do about it ?” 

“Run it. Are you McWilliams ?” 

“McWilliams? I wish I was for just one 
minute. I’m one of his clerks.” 

“ Where is he?” 

“ I left him on La Salle Street yesterday 
afternoon.” 

“ What’s your name ?” 

“Just plain Ferguson.” 

“ Well, Ferguson, it’s none of my busi- 
ness, but as long as we’re going to put you 
into Denver or into the river in about a 
minute, I’m curious to know what the 
blazes you’re hustling along this way for.” 

“ Me ? I’ve got twelve hundred thousand 
dollars in gold coin in this car for the Sierra 
128 


The McWilliams Special 

Leone National Bank — that’s all. Didn’t 
you know that five big banks there closed 
their doors yesterday? Worst panic in the 
United States. That’s what I’m here for, 
and five huskies with me eating and sleep- 
ing in this car,” continued Ferguson, look- 
ing ahead. “You’re not going to tackle 
that bridge, are you ?” 

“We are, and right off. If there’s any of 
your huskies want to drop out, now’s their 
chance,” said Pat Francis, as Sinclair slowed 
up for his run. 

Ferguson called his men. The five with 
their rifles came cautiously forward. 

“ Boys,” said Ferguson, briefly. “ There’s 
a bridge afire ahead. These guys are going 
to try to run it. It’s not in your contract, 
that kind of a chance. Do you want to get 
off? I stay with the specie, myself. You 
can do exactly as you please. Murray, 
what do you say ?” he asked, addressing the 
leader of the force, who appeared to weigh 
about two hundred and sixty. 

“ What do I say?” echoed Murray, with 
decision, as he looked for a soft place to 
alight alongside the track. “I say I’ll drop 
out right here. I don’t mind train robbers, 
i 129 


The McWilliams Special 

but I don’t tackle a burning bridge — not if I 
know it,” and he jumped off. 

“ Well, Peaters,” asked Ferguson, of the 
second man, coolly, “ do you want to stay?” 

“ Me?” echoed Peaters, looking ahead at 
the mass of flame leaping upward — “ me 
stay? Well, not in a thousand years. You 
can have my gun, Mr. Ferguson, and send 
my check to 439 Milwaukee Avenue, if you 
please. Gentlemen, good -day.” And off 
went Peaters. 

And off went every last man of the valor- 
ous detectives except one lame fellow, who 
said he would just as lief be dead as alive 
anyway, and declared he would stay with 
Ferguson and die rich! 

Sinclair, thinking he might never get 
another chance, was whistling sharply for 
orders. Francis, breathless with the news, 
ran forward. 

“Coin? How much? Twelve hundred 
thousand. Whew !” cried Sinclair. “Swing 
up, Pat. We’re off.” 

The Five-Nine gathered herself with a 
spring. Even the engineer’s heart quailed 
as they got headway. He knew his busi- 
ness, and he knew that if only the rails 



SINCLAIR WAS WHISTLING SHARPLY FOR ORDERS 


i 





The McWilliams Special 

hadn’t buckled they were perfectly safe, for 
the heavy truss would stand a lot of burn- 
ing before giving way under a swiftly mov- 
ing train. Only, as they flew nearer, the 
blaze rolling up in dense volume looked 
horribly threatening. After all it was fool- 
hardy, and he felt it; but he was past the 
stopping now, and he pulled the choker to 
the limit. It seemed as if she never cov- 
ered steel so fast. Under the head she 
now had the crackling bridge was less than 
five hundred — four hundred — three hun- 
dred — two hundred feet, and there was no 
longer time to think. With a stare, Sinclair 
shut off. He wanted no push or pull on 
the track. The McWilliams Special was 
just a tremendous arrow, shooting through 
a truss of fire, and half a dozen speechless 
men on either side of the river waiting for 
the catastrophe. 

Jerry MacElroy crouched low under the 
gauges. Sinclair jumped from his box and 
stood with a hand on the throttle and a 
hand on the air, the glass crashing around 
his head like hail. A blast of fiery air 
and flying cinders burned and choked him. 
The engine, alive with danger, flew like a 


The McWilliams Special 

great monkey along the writhing steel. So 
quick, so black, so hot the blast, and so 
terrific the leap, she stuck her nose into 
clean air before the men in the cab could 
rise to it. 

There was a heave in the middle like the 
lurch of a sea-sick steamer, and with it the 
Five-Nine got her paws on cool iron and 
solid ground, and the Mattaback and the 
blaze — all except a dozen tongues which 
licked the cab and the roof of the baggage- 
car a minute — were behind. Georgie Sin- 
clair, shaking the hot glass out of his hair, 
looked ahead through his frizzled eyelids 
and gave her a full head for the western 
bluffs of the valley; then looked at his 
watch. 

It was the hundred and ninetieth mile- 
post just at her nose, and the dial read 
eight o’clock and fifty-five minutes to a sec- 
ond. There was an hour to the good and 
seventy-six miles and a water to cover; but 
they were seventy-six of the prettiest miles 
under ballast anywhere, and the Five-Nine 
reeled them off like a cylinder-press. Sev- 
enty-nine minutes later Sinclair whistled 
for the Denver yards. 

132 


The McWilliams Special 

There was a tremendous commotion 
among the waiting engines. If there was 
one there were fifty big locomotives wait- 
ing to charivari the McWilliams Special. 
The wires had told the story in Denver 
long before, and as the Five -Nine sailed 
ponderously up the gridiron every mogul, 
every consolidated, every ten-wheeler, every 
hog, every switch -bumper, every air- hose 
screamed an uproarious welcome to Georgie 
Sinclair and the Sky-Scraper. 

They had broken every record from 
McCloud to Denver, and all knew it; but 
as the McWilliams Special drew swiftly 
past, every last man in the yards stared 
at her cracked, peeled, blistered, haggard 
looks. 

“What the deuce have you bit into?” 
cried the depot-master, as the Five -Nine 
swept splendidly up and stopped with her 
battered eye hard on the depot clock. 

“ Mattaback bridge is burned ; had to 
crawl over on the stringers,” answered Sin- 
clair, coughing up a cinder. 

“Where’s McWilliams?” 

“ Back there sitting on his grief, I 
reckon.” 


133 


The McWilliams Special 

While the crew went up to register, two 
big four-horse trucks backed up to the bag- 
gage-car, and in a minute a dozen men were 
rolling specie-kegs out of the door, which 
was smashed in, as being quicker than to 
tear open the barricades. 

Sinclair, MacElroy, and Francis with his • 
brakeman were surrounded by a crowd of 
railroad men. As they stood answering 
questions, a big prosperous-looking banker, 
with black rings under his eyes, pushed in 
towards them, accompanied by the lame 
fellow, who had missed the chance of a life- 
time to die rich, and by Ferguson, who had 
told the story. 

The banker shook hands with each one 
of the crews. “ You’ve saved us, boys. We 
needed it. There’s a mob of five thousand 
of the worst-scared people in America clam- 
oring at the doors ; and, by the eternal, now 
we’re fixed for every one of them. Come 
up to the bank. I want you to ride right 
up with the coin, all of you.” 

It was an uncommonly queer occasion, 
but an uncommonly enthusiastic one. Fifty 
policemen made the escort and cleared the 
way for the trucks to pull up across the side- 
WI J 34 


The McWilliams Special 

walk, so the porters could lug the kegs of 
gold into the bank before the very eyes of 
the rattled depositors. 

In an hour the run was broken. But 
when the four railroad men left the bank, 
after all sorts of hugging by excited di- 
rectors, they carried not only the blessings 
of the officials, but each in his vest pocket 
a check, every one of which discounted the 
biggest voucher ever drawn on the West 
End for a month’s pay; though I violate 
no confidence in stating that Georgie Sin- 
clair’s was bigger than any two of the oth- 
ers. And this is how it happens that there 
hangs in the directors’ room of the Sierra 
Leone National a very creditable portrait of 
the kid engineer. 

Besides paying tariff on the specie, the 
bank paid for a new coat of paint for the 
McWilliams Special from caboose to pilot. 
She was the last train across the Mattaback 
for two weeks. 














































































































































































































































The Million-Dollar Freight-Train 









































* 


. 











■A 



































































































The Million-Dollar Freight-Train 


I T was the second month of the strike, 
and not a pound of freight had been 
moved; things looked smoky on the 
West End. 

The general superintendent happened to 
be with us when the news came. 

“You can’t handle it, boys,” said he, 
nervously. “What you’d better do is to 
turn it over to the Columbian Pacific.” 

Our contracting freight agent on the 
coast at that time was a fellow so erratic 
that he was nicknamed Crazyhorse. Right 
in the midst of the strike Crazyhorse wired 
that he had secured a big silk shipment for 
New York. We were paralyzed. 

We had no engineers, no firemen, and no 
motive power to speak of. The strikers 
were pounding our men, wrecking our 
trains, and giving us the worst of it gen- 
139 


The Million-Dollar Freight-Train 

erally; that is, when we couldn’t give it 
to them. Why the fellow displayed his 
activity at that particular juncture still re- 
mains a mystery. Perhaps he had a grudge 
against the road; if so, he took an artful 
revenge. Everybody on the system with 
ordinary railroad sense knew that our strug- 
gle was to keep clear of freight business 
until we got rid of our strike. Anything 
valuable or perishable was especially un- 
welcome. 

But the stuff was docked and loaded and 
consigned in our care before we knew it. 
After that, a refusal to carry it would be 
like hoisting the white flag; and that is 
something which never yet flew on the 
West End. 

“Turn it over to the Columbian,” said 
the general superintendent; but the general 
superintendent was not looked up to on our 
division. He hadn’t enough sand. Our 
head was a fighter, and he gave tone to 
every man under him. 

“ No,” he thundered, bringing down his 
fist, “not in a thousand years ! We’ll move 
it ourselves. Wire Montgomery, the gen- 
eral manager, that we will take care of it. 

140 


The Million-Dollar Freight-Train 

And wire him to fire Crazyhorse — and to 
do it right off.” And before the silk was 
turned over to us Crazyhorse was looking 
for another job. It is the only case on 
record where a freight hustler was dis- 
charged for getting business. 

There were twelve car-loads; it was in- 
sured for eighty- five thousand dollars a car ; 
you can figure how far the title is wrong, 
but you never can estimate the worry that 
stuff gave us. It looked as big as twelve 
million dollars’ worth. In fact, one scrub- 
car tink, with the glory of the West End at 
heart, had a fight over the amount with a 
sceptical hostler. He maintained that the 
actual money value was a hundred and 
twenty millions ; but I give you the figures 
just as they went over the wire, and they 
are right. 

What bothered us most was that the 
strikers had the tip almost as soon as we 
had it. Having friends on every road in 
the country, they knew as much about our 
business as we ourselves. The minute it 
was announced that we should move the 
silk they were after us. It was a defiance; 
a last one. If we could move freight — for 


The Million-Dollar Freight-Train 

we were already moving passengers after a 
fashion — the strike might be well accounted 
beaten. 

Stewart, the leader of the local contin- 
gent, together with his followers, got after 
me at once. 

“ You don’t show much sense, Reed,” said 
he. “You fellows here are breaking your 
necks to get things moving, and when this 
strike’s over if our boys ask for your dis- 
charge they’ll get it. This road can’t run 
without our engineers. We’re going to 
beat you. If you dare try to move this 
stuff we’ll have your scalp when it’s over. 
You’ll never get your silk to Zanesville, I’ll 
promise you that. And if you ditch it and 
make a million dollar loss, you’ll get let out 
anyway, my buck.” 

“ I’m here to obey orders, Stewart,” I re- 
torted. What was the use of more ? I felt 
uncomfortable; but we had determined to 
move the silk: there was nothing more to 
be said. 

When I went over to the round-house and 
told Neighbor the decision he said never a 
word, but he looked a great deal. Neigh- 
bor’s task was to supply the motive power. 

142 __ 


The Million-Dollar Freight-Train 

All that we had, uncrippled, was in the 
passenger service, because passengers must 
be moved — must be taken care of first of all. 
In order to win a strike you must have pub- 
lic opinion on your side. 

“ Nevertheless, Neighbor,” said I, after we 
had talked a while, “ we must move the silk 
also.” 

Neighbor studied; then he roared at his 
foreman. 

“Send Bartholomew Mullen here.” He 
spoke with a decision that made me think 
the business was done. I had never hap- 
pened, it is true, to hear of Bartholomew 
Mullen in the department of motive power ; 
but the impression the name gave me was 
of a monstrous fellow; big as Neighbor, or 
old man Sankey, or Dad Hamilton. 

“ I’ll put Bartholomew ahead of it,” mut- 
tered Neighbor, tightly. A boy walked into 
the office. ^ 

“ Mr. Garten said you wanted to see me, 
sir,” said he, addressing the master me- 
chanic. 

“ I do, Bartholomew,” responded Neigh- 
bor. 

The figure in my mind’s eye shrunk in a 
143 . 


The Million-Dollar Freight-Train 

r 

twinkling. Then it occurred to me that it 
must be this boy’s father who was wanted. 

“ You have been begging for a chance to 
take out an engine, Bartholomew,” began 
Neighbor, coldly ; and I knew it was on. 

“ Yes, sir.” 

“ You want to get killed, Bartholomew.” 

Bartholomew smiled, as if the idea was 
not altogether displeasing. 

“ How would you like to go pilot to-mor- 
row for McCurdy? You to take the 44 and 
run as first Seventy-eight. McCurdy will 
run as second Seventy-eight.” 

“ I know I could run an engine all right,” 
ventured Bartholomew, as if Neighbor were 
the only one taking the chances in giving 
him an engine. “ I know the track from 
here to Zanesville. I helped McNeff fire 
one week.” 

“ Then go home, and go to bed, and be 
over here at six o’clock to-morrow morning. 
And sleep sound; for it may be your last 
chance.” 

It was plain that the master - mechanic 
hated to do it; it was simply sheer neces- 
sity. 

“ He’s a wiper,” mused Neighbor, as Bar- 

144 


The Million-Dollar Freight-Train 

tholomew walked springily away. “ I took 
him in here sweeping two years ago. He 
ought to be firing now, but the union held 
him back ; that’s why he hates them. He 
knows more about an engine now than half 
the lodge. They’d better have let him in,” 
said the master - mechanic, grimly. “ He 
may be the means of breaking their backs 
yet. If I give him an engine and he runs 
it, I’ll never take him off, union or no union, 
strike or no strike.” 

“ How old is that boy?” I asked. 

“ Eighteen ; and never a kith or a kin that 
I know of. Bartholomew Mullen,” mused 
Neighbor, as the slight figure moved across 
the flat, “ big name — small boy. Well, Bar- 
tholomew, you’ll know something more by 
to-morrow night about running an engine, 
or a whole lot less ; that’s as it happens. If 
he gets killed, it’s your fault, Reed.” 

He meant that I was calling on him for 
men when he absolutely couldn’t produce 
them. 

“ I heard once,” he went on, “ about a 
fellow named Bartholomew being mixed up 
in a massacree. But I take it he must 
have been an older man than our Bartholo- 
K 145 


The Million-Dollar Freight-Train 

mew — nor his other name wasn’t Mullen, 
neither. I disremember just what it was; 
but it wasn’t Mullen.” 

“ Well, don’t say I want to get the boy 
killed, Neighbor,” I protested. “ I’ve plenty 
to answer for. I’m here to run trains — when 
there are any to run; that’s murder enough 
for me. You needn’t send Bartholomew out 
on my account.” 

“ Give him a slow schedule and I’ll give 
him orders to jump early; that’s all we can 
do. If the strikers don’t ditch him, he’ll get 
through, somehow.” 

It stuck in my crop — the idea of putting 
the boy on a pilot engine to take all the 
dangers ahead of that particular train ; but 
I had a good deal else to think of besides. 
From the minute the silk got into the 
McCloud yards we posted double guards 
around. About twelve o’clock that night 
we held a council of war, which ended in 
our running the train into the out freight- 
house. The result was that by morning 
we had a new train made up. It consisted 
of fourteen refrigerator-cars loaded with 
oranges, which had come in mysteriously 
the night before. It was announced that 

146 


The Million-Dollar Freight-Train 

the silk would be held for the present and 
the oranges rushed through. Bright and 
early the refrigerator-train was run down to 
the ice-houses and twenty men were put to 
work icing the oranges. At seven o’clock 
McCurdy pulled in the local passenger with 
engine 105. Our plan was to cancel the 
local and run him right out with the 
oranges. When he got in he reported 
the 105 had sprung a tire; it knocked our 
scheme into a cocked hat. 

There was a lantern-jawed conference in 
the round-house. 

“ What can you do ?” asked the superin- 
tendent, in desperation. 

“ There’s only one thing I can do. Put 
Bartholomew Mullen on it with the 44, and 
put McCurdy to bed for No. 2 to-night,” 
responded Neighbor. 

We were running first in, first out; but 
we took care to always have somebody for 
1 and 2 who at least knew an injector from 
an air-pump. 

It was eight o’clock. I looked into the 
locomotive stalls. The first — the only — 
man in sight was Bartholomew Mullen. He 
was very busy polishing the 44. He had 
147 


The Million-Dollar Freight-Train 

good steam on her, and the old tub was 
wheezing as if she had the asthma. The 
44 was old; she was homely; she was rick- 
ety; but Bartholomew Mullen wiped her 
battered nose as deferentially as if she had 
been a spick -span, spider- driver, tail -truck 
mail-racer. 

She wasn’t much — the 44. But in those 
days Bartholomew wasn’t much ; and the 44 
was Bartholomew’s. 

“ How is she steaming, Bartholomew ?” I 
sung out; he was right in the middle of 
her. Looking up, he fingered his waste 
modestly and blushed through a dab of 
crude petroleum over his eye. 

“ Hundred and thirty, sir. She’s a ter- 
rible free steamer, the old 44 ; I’m all ready 
to run her out.” 

“ Who’s marked up to fire for you, Bar- 
tholomew ?” 

Bartholomew Mullen looked at me fra- 
ternally. 

“ Neighbor couldn’t give me anybody but 
a wiper,” said Bartholomew, in a sort of a 
wouldn’t-that-kill-you tone. 

The unconscious arrogance of the boy 
quite knocked me, so soon had honors 
148 


The Million-Dollar Freight-Train 

changed his point of view. Last night a 
despised wiper ; at daybreak, an engineer ; 
and his nose in the air at the idea of taking 
on a wiper for fireman. And all so inno- 
cent. 

“ Would you object, Bartholomew,” I sug- 
gested, gently, “ to a train-master for fire- 
man ?” 

“ I don’t — think so, sir.” 

“Thank you; because I am going down 
to Zanesville this morning myself and I 
thought I’d ride with you. Is it all right?” 

“ Oh yes, sir — if Neighbor doesn’t care.” 

I smiled. He didn’t know who Neighbor 
took orders from ; but he thought, evident- 
ly, not from me. 

“ Then run her down to the oranges, 
Bartholomew, and couple on, and we’ll or- 
der ourselves out. See ?” 

The 44 really looked like a baby-carriage 
when we got her in front of the refrigerators. 
However, after the necessary preliminaries, 
we gave a very sporty toot and pulled out; 
in a few minutes we were sailing down the 
valley. 

For fifty miles we bobbed along with our 
cargo of iced silk as easy as old shoes ; for 
149 


The Million-Dollar Freight-Train 

I need hardly explain that we had packed 
the silk into the refrigerators to confuse the 
strikers. The great risk was that they 
would try to ditch us. 

I was watching the track as a mouse 
would a cat, looking every minute for 
trouble. We cleared the gumbo cut west 
of the Beaver at a pretty good clip, in order 
to make the grade on the other side. The 
bridge there is hidden in summer by a 
grove of hackberrys. I had just pulled 
open to cool her a bit when I noticed how 
high the backwater was on each side of 
the track. Suddenly I felt the fill going 
soft under the drivers — felt the 44 wobble 
and slew. Bartholomew shut off hard and 
threw the air as I sprang to the window. 
The peaceful little creek ahead looked as 
angry as the Platte in April water, and the 
bottoms were a lake. 

Somewhere up the valley there had been a 
cloudburst, for overhead the sun was bright. 
The Beaver was roaring over its banks and 
the bridge was out. Bartholomew screamed 
for brakes; it looked as we were against it — 
and hard. 

A soft track to stop on, a torrent of storm 


The Million-Dollar Freight-Train 

water ahead, and ten hundred thousand dol- 
lars’ worth of silk behind — not to mention 
equipment. 

I yelled at Bartholomew and motioned 
for him to jump ; my conscience is clear on 
that point. The 44 was stumbling along, 
trying, like a drunken man, to hang to the 
rotten track. 

“Bartholomew!” I yelled; but he was 
head out and looking back at his train, 
while he jerked frantically at the air lever. 
I understood: the air wouldn’t work; it 
never will on those old tubs when you need 
it. The sweat pushed out on me. I was 
thinking of how much the silk would bring 
us after a bath in the Beaver. Bartholo- 
mew stuck to his levers like a man in a sig- 
nal-tower, but every second brought us 
closer to open water. Watching him, in- 
tent only on saving his first train — heedless 
of saving his life — I was really a bit ashamed 
to jump. While I hesitated, he somehow 
got the brakes to set; the old 44 bucked 
like a bronco. 

It wasn’t too soon. She checked her 
train nobly at the last, but I saw nothing 
could keep her from the drink. I caught 


The Million-Dollar Freight-Train 


Bartholomew a terrific slap and again I 
yelled; then, turning to the gangway, I 
dropped into the soft mud on my side. 
The 44 hung low, and it was easy lighting. 

Bartholomew sprang from his seat a 
second later, but his blouse caught in the 
teeth of the quadrant. He stooped quick 
as thought, and peeled the thing over his 
head. But then he was caught with his 
hands in the wristbands, and the ponies of 
44 tipped over the broken abutment. 

Pull as he would, he couldn’t get free. 
The pilot dipped into the torrent slowly; 
but, losing her balance, the 44 kicked her 
heels into the air like lightning, and shot 
with a frightened wheeze plump into the 
creek, dragging her engineer after her. 

The head car stopped on the brink. 
Running across the track, I looked for Bar- 
tholomew. He wasn’t there; I knew he 
must have gone down with his engine. 

Throwing off my gloves, I dove just as I 
stood, close to the tender, which hung half 
submerged. I am a good bit of a fish 
under water, but no self-respecting fish 
would be caught in that yellow mud. I 
realized, too, the instant I struck the water 
152 


The Million-Dollar Freight-Train 

that I should have dived on the up-stream 
side. The current took me away whirling; 
when I came up for air I was fifty feet be- 
low the pier. I felt it was all up with Bar- 
tholomew as I scrambled out; but to my 
amazement, as I shook my eyes open, the 
train crew were running forward, and there 
stood Bartholomew on the track above me 
looking at the refrigerators. When I got 
to him he explained to me how he was 
dragged in and had to tear the sleeves out 
of his blouse under water to get free. 

The surprise is, how little fuss men make 
about such things when they are busy. It 
took only five minutes for the conductor to 
hunt up a coil of wire and a sounder for me, 
and by the time he got forward with it Bar- 
tholomew was half-way up a telegraph-pole 
to help me cut in on a live wire. Fast as I 
could I rigged a pony, and began calling 
the McCloud dispatcher. It was a rocky 
send, but after no end of pounding I got 
him, and gave orders for the wrecking-gang 
and for one more of Neighbor’s rapidly de- 
creasing supply of locomotives. 

Bartholomew, sitting on a strip of fence 
which still rose above water, looked forlorn. 
i53 


The Million-Dollar Freight-Train 

To lose the first engine he ever handled, in 
the Beaver, was tough, and he was evident- 
ly speculating on his chances of ever get- 
ting another. If there weren’t tears in his 
eyes, there was storm water certainly. But 
after the relief - engine had pulled what 
was left of us back six miles to a siding, I 
made it my first business to explain to 
Neighbor, nearly beside himself, that Bar- 
tholomew was not only not at fault, but 
that he had actually saved the train by his 
nerve. 

“ I’ll tell you, Neighbor,” I suggested, 
when we got straightened around, “ give 
us the 109 to go ahead as pilot, and run the 
stuff around the river division with Foley 
and the 216.” 

“ What’ll you do with No. 6 ?” growled 
Neighbor. Six was the local passenger, 
west. 

“Annul it west of McCloud,” said I, in- 
stantly. “ We’ve got this silk on our hands 
now, and I’d move it if it tied up every pas- 
senger-train on the division. If we can get 
the infernal stuff through, it will practically 
beat the strike. If we fail, it will beat the 
company.” 


154 


The Million-Dollar Freight-Train 

By the time we backed to Newhall Junc- 
tion, Neighbor had made up his mind my 
way. Mullen and I climbed into the 109, 
and Foley with the 216, and none too good 
a grace, coupled on to the silk, and, flying 
red signals, we started again for Zanesville 
over the river division. 

Foley was always full of mischief. He 
had a better engine than ours, anyway, and 
he took satisfaction the rest of the after- 
noon in crowding us. Every mile of the 
way he was on our heels. I was throwing 
the coal and distinctly remember. 

It was after dark when we reached the 
Beverly Hill, and we took it at a lively 
pace. The strikers were not on our minds 
then; it was Foley who bothered. 

When the long parallel steel lines of the 
upper yards spread before us, flashing un- 
der the arc-lights, we were away above yard 
speed. Running a locomotive into one of 
those big yards is like shooting a rapid in 
a canoe. There is a bewildering maze of 
tracks lighted by red and green lamps to 
be watched the closest. The hazards are 
multiplied the minute you pass the throat, 
and a yard wreck is a dreadful tangle: it 
155 


The Million-Dollar Freight-Train 


makes everybody from road-master to flag- 
men furious, and not even Bartholomew 
wanted to face an inquiry on a yard wreck. 
On the other hand, he couldn’t afford to 
be caught by Foley, who was chasing him 
out of pure caprice. 

I saw the boy holding the throttle at a 
half and fingering the air anxiously as we 
jumped through the frogs; but the roughest 
riding on track so far beats the ties as a cush- 
ion that when the 109 suddenly stuck her 
paws through an open switch we bounced 
against the roof of the cab like footballs. I 
grabbed a brace with one hand and with 
the other reached instinctively across to 
Bartholomew’s side to seize the throttle he 
held. But as I tried to shut him off he 
jerked it wide open in spite of me, and 
turned with lightning in his eye. 

“No!” he cried, and his voice rang hard. 
The 109 took the tremendous shove at her 
back and leaped like a frightened horse. 
Away we went across the yard, through the 
cinders, and over the ties. My teeth have 
never been the same since. I don’t belong 
on an engine, anyway, and since then I 
have kept off. At the moment I was con- 
156 


The Million-Dollar Freight-Train 

vinced that the strain had been too much 
— that Bartholomew was stark crazy. He 
sat bouncing clear to the roof and clinging 
to his levers like a lobster. 

But his strategy was dawning on me ; in 
fact, he was pounding it into me. Even 
the shock and scare of leaving the track 
and tearing up the yard had not driven 
from Bartholomew’s noddle the most im- 
portant feature of our situation, which was, 
above everything, to keep out of the way of 
the silk-train. 

I felt every moment more mortified at 
my attempt to shut him off. I had done 
the trick of the woman who grabs the reins. 
It was even better to tear up the yard than 
to stop for Foley to smash into and scatter 
the silk over the coal -chutes. Bartholo- 
mew’s decision was one of the traits which 
make the runner: instant perception coup- 
led to instant resolve. The ordinary dub 
thinks what he should have done to avoid 
disaster after it is all over; Bartholomew 
thought before. 

On we bumped, across frogs, through 
switches, over splits, and into target rods, 
when — and this is the miracle of it all — 
157 


The Million-Dollar Freight-Train 

the 109 got her fore-feet on a split switch, 
made a contact, and, after a slew or two 
like a bogged horse, she swung up sweet 
on the rails again, tender and all. Bar- 
tholomew shut off with an under cut that 
brought us up double and nailed her feet, 
with the air, right where she stood. 

We had left the track, ploughed a hun- 
dred feet across the yards, and jumped on 
to another track. It is the only time I 
ever heard of its happening anywhere, but 
I was on the engine with Bartholomew 
Mullen when it was done. 

Foley choked his train the instant he saw 
our hind lights bobbing. We climbed down 
and ran back. He had stopped just where 
we should have stood if I had shut off. Bar- 
tholomew ran to the switch to examine it. 
The contact light, green, still burned like a 
false beacon ; and lucky it did, for it showed 
the switch had been tampered with and ex- 
onerated Bartholomew Mullen completely. 
The attempt of the strikers to spill the silk 
right in the yards had only made the repu- 
tation of a new engineer. Thirty minutes 
later the million - dollar train was turned 
over to the eastern division to wrestle 
158 


The Million-Dollar Freight-Train 

with, and we breathed, all of us, a good 
bit easier. 

Bartholomew Mullen, now a passenger 
runner, who ranks with Kennedy and Jack 
Moore and Foley and George Sinclair him- 
self, got a personal letter from the general 
manager complimenting him on his pretty 
wit ; and he was good enough to say noth- 
ing whatever about mine. 

We registered that night and went to 
supper together — Foley, Jackson, Bartholo- 
mew, and I. Afterwards we dropped into the 
dispatcher’s office. Something was coming 
from McCloud, but the operators, to save 
their lives, couldn’t catch it. I listened a 
minute; it was Neighbor. Now Neighbor 
isn’t great on dispatching trains. He can 
make himself understood over the poles, but 
his sending is like a boy’s sawing wood — 
sort of uneven. 

However, though I am not much on run* 
ning yards, I claim to be able to take the 
wildest ball that was ever thrown along the 
wire, and the chair was tendered me at once 
to catch Neighbor’s extraordinary passes at 
the McCloud key. They came something 
like this : 


159 


The Million-Dollar Freight-Train 

To Opr. : 

Tell Massacree [that was the word that stuck them all ’ 
and I could perceive Neighbor was talking emphatically ; 
he had apparently forgotten Bartholomew's last name a?id 
was trying to connect with the one he had disreme?nbered 
the night before \ — tell Massacree [ repeated Neighbor ] that 
he is al-1-1 right. Tell hi-m I give ’im double mileage 
for to-day all the way through. And to-morrow he gets 
the 109 to keep. 


Neighb-b-or. 


Bucks 



Bucks 


I SEE a good deal of stuff in print about 
the engineer,” said Callahan, dejected- 
ly. “ What’s the matter with the dis- 
patcher? What’s the matter with the man 
who tells the engineer what to do — and 
just what to do? How to do it — and ex- 
actly how to do it? With the man who sits 
shut in brick walls and hung in Chinese 
puzzles, his ear glued to a receiver, and his 
finger fast to a key, and his eye riveted on 
a train chart? The man who orders and 
annuls and stops and starts everything 
within five hundred miles of him, and 
holds under his thumb more lives every 
minute than a brigadier does in a lifetime? 
For instance,” asked Callahan, in his tired 
way, “what’s the matter with Bucks?” 

163 


Bucks 


i 

Now, I myself never knew Bucks. He 
left the West End before I went on. Bucks 
is second vice-president — which means the 
boss — of a transcontinental line now, and 
a very great swell. But no man from the 
West End who calls on Bucks has to wait 
for an audience, though bigger men do. 
They talk of him out there yet. Not of 
General Superintendent Bucks, which he 
came to be, nor of General Manager Bucks. 
On the West End he is just plain Bucks; 
but Bucks on the West End means a whole 
lot. 

“He saved the company $300,000 that 
night the Ogalalla train ran away,” mused 
Callahan. Callahan himself is assistant 
superintendent now. 

“Three hundred thousand dollars is a 
good deal of money, Callahan,” I objected. 

“ Figure it out yourself. To begin with, 
fifty passengers’ lives — that’s $5000 apiece, 
isn’t it?” Callahan had a cold-blooded way 
of figuring a passenger’s life from the com- 
pany standpoint. “ It would have killed 
164 


Bucks 


over fifty passengers if the runaway had 
ever struck 59. There wouldn’t have been 
enough left of 59 to make a decent funeral. 
Then the equipment, at least $50,000. But 
there was a whole lot more than $300,000 
in it for Bucks.” 

“ How so ?” 

“ He told me once that if he hadn’t 
saved 59 that night he would never have 
signed another order anywhere on any 
road.” 

“ Why?” 

“ Why ? Because, after it was all over, 
he found out that his own mother was 
aboard 59. Didn’t you ever hear that? 
Well, sir, it was Christmas Eve, and the year 
was 1884.” 

Christmas Eve everywhere; but on the 
West End it was just plain December 
24th. 

“ High winds will prevail for ensuing 
twenty-four hours. Station agents will use 
extra care to secure cars on sidings ; brake- 
men must use care to avoid being blown 
from moving trains.” 

That is about all Bucks said in his bulle- 
ts 


Bucks 


tins that evening ; not a word about Christ- 
mas or Merry Christmas. In fact, if Christ- 
mas had come to McCloud that night they 
couldn’t have held it twenty - four minutes, 
much less twenty-four hours; the wind was 
too high. All the week, all the day, all the 
night it had blown — a December wind ; dry 
as an August noon, bitter as powdered ice. 
It was in the early days of our Western 
railroading, when we had only one fast 
train on the schedule — the St. Louis -Cali- 
fornia Express; and only one fast engine 
on the division — the ioi ; and only one 
man on the whole West End — Bucks. 

Bucks was assistant superintendent and 
master-mechanic and train-master and chief 
dispatcher and storekeeper — and a bully 
good fellow. There were some boys in the 
service; among them, Callahan. Callahan 
was seventeen, with hair like a sunset, and 
a mind quick as an air-brake. It was his 
first year at the key, and he had a night 
trick under Bucks. 

Callahan claims it blew so hard that 
night that it blew most of the color out of 
his hair. Sod houses had sprung up like 
dog-towns in the buffalo grass during the 
1 66 


Bucks 


fall. But that day homesteaders crept into 
dugouts and smothered over buffalo chip 
fires. Horses and cattle huddled into 
friendly pockets a little out of the worst of 
it, or froze mutely in pitiless fence corners 
on the divides. Sand drove gritting down 
from the Cheyenne hills like a storm of 
snow. Streets of the raw prairie towns 
stared deserted at the sky. Even cowboys 
kept their ranches, and through the gloom 
of noon the sun cast a coward shadow. It 
was a wretched day, and the sun went 
down with the wind tuning into a gale, 
and all the boys in bad humor — except 
Bucks. Not that Bucks couldn’t get mad; 
but it took more than a cyclone to start 
him. 

No. 59, the California Express, was late 
that night. All the way up the valley the 
wind caught her quartering. Really the 
marvel is that out there on the plains 
such storms didn’t blow our toy engines 
clear off the rails; for that matter they 
might as well have taken the rails, too, 
for none of them went over sixty pounds. 
59 was due at eleven o’clock; it was half- 
past twelve when she pulled in and on 
167 


Bucks 


Callahan’s trick. But Bucks hung around 
the office until she staggered up under the 
streaked moonlight, as frowsy a looking 
train as ever choked on alkali. 

There was always a crowd down at the 
station to meet 59; she was the big ar- 
rival of the day at McCloud, even if she 
didn’t get in until eleven o’clock at night. 
She brought the mail and the express and 
the landseekers and the travelling men and 
the strangers generally; so the McCloud 
livery men and hotel runners and promi- 
nent citizens and prominent loafers and the 
city marshal usually came down to meet her. 
But it was not so that night. The platform 
was bare. Not even the hardy chief of po- 
lice, who was town watch and city marshal 
all combined, ventured out. 

The engineer swung out of his cab with 
the silence of an abused man. His eyes 
were full of soda, his ears full of sand, his 
mustache full of burrs, and his whiskers full 
of tumble - weeds. The conductor and the 
brakemen climbed sullenly down, and the 
baggage - man shoved open his door and 
slammed a trunk out on the platform with- 
out a pretence of sympathy. Then the 

z68 


Bucks 


outgoing crew climbed aboard, and in a 
hurry. The conductor-elect ran down-stairs 
from the register, and pulled his cap down 
hard before he pushed ahead against the 
wind to give the engineer his copy of the 
orders as the new engine was coupled up. 
The fireman pulled the canvas jealously 
around the cab end. The brakeman ran 
hurriedly back to examine the air con- 
nections, and gave his signal to the con- 
ductor; the conductor gave his to the en- 
gineer. There were two short, choppy 
snorts from the ioi, and 59 moved out 
stealthily, evenly, resistlessly into the teeth 
of the night. In another minute, only her 
red lamps gleamed up the yard. One man 
still on the platform watched them recede; 
it was Bucks. 

He came up to the dispatcher’s office and 
sat down. Callahan wondered why he didn’t 
go home and to bed ; but Callahan was too 
good a railroad man to ask questions of a 
superior. Bucks might have stood on his 
head on the stove, and it red-hot, without 
being pursued with inquiries from Callahan. 
If Bucks chose to sit up out there on the 
frozen prairies, in a flimsy barn of a station, 
169 


Bucks 


and with the wind howling murder at twelve 
o’clock past, and that on Chrb — the twenty- 
fourth of December, it was Bucks’s own 
business. 

“ I kind of looked for my mother to-night,” 
said he, after Callahan got his orders out of 
the way for a minute. “Wrote she was 
coming out pretty soon for a little visit.” 

“ Where does your mother live ?” 

“ Chicago. I sent her transportation two 
weeks ago. Reckon she thought she’d bet- 
ter stay home for Christmas. Back in God’s 
country they have Christmas just about this 
time of year. Watch out to-night, Jim. 
I’m going home. It’s a wind for your life.” 

Callahan was making a meeting-point for 
two freights when the door closed behind 
Bucks; he didn’t even sing out “Good- 
night.” And as for Merry Chri — well, that 
had no place on the West End anyhow. 

“ D-i, D-i, D-i, D-i,” came clicking into 
the room. Callahan wasn’t asleep. Once 
he did sleep over the key. When he told 
Bucks, he made sure of his time ; only he 
thought Bucks ought to know. 

Bucks shook his head pretty hard that 
time. “ It’s awful business, Jim. It’s mur- 

170 


Bucks 


der, you know. It’s the penitentiary, if they 
should convict you. But it’s worse than 
that. If anything happened because you 
went to sleep over the key, you’d have 
them on your mind all your life, don’t 
you know — forever. Men — and — and chil- 
dren. That’s what I always think about 
— the children. Maimed and scalded and 
burned. Jim, if it ever happens again, quit 
dispatching; get into commercial work; 
mistakes don’t cost life there ; don’t try to 
handle trains. If it ever happens with you, 
you’ll kill yourself.” 

That was all he said; it was enough. 
And no wonder Callahan loved him. 

The wind tore frantically around the sta- 
tion; but everything else was so still. It 
was one o’clock now, and not a soul about 
but Callahan. D-i, D-i, J, clicked sharp and 
fast. “ Twelve or fourteen cars passed here 
— just — now east — running a-a-a-” Calla- 
han sprang up like a flash — listened. 
What ? R-u-n-n-i-n-g a-w-a-y ? 

It was the Jackson operator calling; Cal- 
lahan jumped to the key. “What’s that?” 
he asked, quick as lightning could dash it. 

“ Twelve or fourteen cars coal passed 


Bucks 


here, fully forty miles an hour, headed east, 
driven by the wi — ” 

That was all J could send, for Ogalalla 
broke in. Ogalalla is the station just west 
of Jackson. And with Callahan’s copper 
hair raising higher at every letter, this came 
from Ogalalla: “ Heavy gust caught twelve 
coal cars on side track, sent them out on 
main line off down the grade.” 

They were already past Jackson, eight 
miles away, headed east, and running down 
hill. Callahan’s eyes turned like hares to 
the train sheet. 59, going west, was due 
that minute to leave Callendar. From Cab 
lendar to Griffin is a twenty - miles’ run. 
There is a station between, but in those 
days no night operator. The runaway 
coal -train was then less than thirty miles 
west of Griffin, coming down a forty-mile 
grade like a cannon ball. If 59 could be 
stopped at Callendar, she could be laid by 
in five minutes, out of the way of the certain 
destruction ahead of her on the main line. 
Callahan seized the key, and began calling 
“Cn.” He pounded until the call burned 
into his fingers. It was an age before Cal- 
lendar answered ; then Callahan’s order flew: 

172 


Bucks 


“ Hold 59. Answer quick.” 

And Callendar answered : “ 59 just pull- 
ing out of upper yard. Too late to stop 
her. What’s the matter?” 

Callahan struck the table with his clinch- 
ed fist, looked wildly about him, then sprang 
from the chair, ran to the window, and threw 
up the sash. The moon shone a bit through 
the storm of sand, but there was not a soul 
in sight. There were lights in the round- 
house a hundred yards across the track. 
He pulled a revolver — every railroad man 
out there carried one those days — and, cov- 
ering one of the round-house windows, be- 
gan firing. It was a risk. There was one 
chance, maybe, to a thousand of his killing 
a night man. But there were a thousand 
chances to one that a whole train-load of 
men and women would be killed inside of 
thirty minutes if he couldn’t get help. 
He chose a window in the machinists’ sec- 
tion, where he knew no one usually went 
at night. He poured bullets into the un- 
lucky casement as fast as powder could 
carry them. Reloading rapidly, he watch- 
ed the round-house door ; and, sure enough, 
almost at once, it was cautiously opened. 
173 


Bucks 


Then he fired into the air — one, two, three, 
four, five, six — and he saw a man start for 
the station on the dead run. He knew, 
too, by the tremendous sweep of his legs 
that it was Ole Anderson, the night fore- 
man, the man of all others he wanted. 

“ Ole,” cried the dispatcher, waving his 
arms frantically as the giant Swede leaped 
across the track and looked up from the 
platform below, “ go get Bucks. I’ve got a 
runaway train going against 59. For your 
life, Ole, run !” 

The big fellow was into the wind with the 
word. Bucks boarded four blocks away. 
Callahan, slamming down the window, took 
the key, and began calling Rowe. Rowe is 
the first station east of Jackson ; it was now 
the first point at which the runaway coal- 
train could be headed. 

“ R-o R-o,” he rattled. The operator must 
have been sitting on the wire, for he an- 
swered at once. As fast as Callahan’s fin- 
gers could talk, he told Rowe the story and 
gave him orders to get the night agent, 
who, he knew, must be down to sell tickets 
for 59, and pile all the ties they could gather 
across the track to derail the runaway train. 
, 174 


Bucks 


Then he began thumping for Kolar, the next 
station east of Rowe, and the second ahead 
of the runaways. He pounded and he 
pounded, and when the man at Kolar an- 
swered, Callahan could have sworn he had 
been asleep — just from the way he talked. 
Does it seem strange ? There are many 
strange things about a dispatcher’s senses. 
“Send your night man to west switch house- 
track, and open for runaway train. Set 
brakes hard on your empties on siding, to 
spill runaways if possible. Do anything and 
everything to keep them from getting by 
you. Work quick.” 

Behind Kolar ’s O. K. came a frantic call 
from Rowe. “ Runaways passed here like 
a streak. Knocked the ties into toothpicks. 
Couldn’t head them.” 

Callahan didn’t wait to hear any more. 
He only wiped the sweat from his face. It 
seemed forever before Kolar spoke again. 
Then it was only to say : “ Runaways went 
by here before night man could get to 
switch and open it.” 

Would Bucks never come ? And if he 
did come, what on earth could stop the 
runaway train now? They were heading 
* i75 


Bucks 


into the worst grade on the West End. It 
averages one per cent, from Kolar to Griffin, 
and there we get down off the Cheyenne 
Hills with a long reverse curve, and drop 
into the canon of the Blackwood with a 
three per cent, grade. Callahan, almost be- 
side himself, threw open a north window to 
look for Bucks. Two men were flying 
down Main Street towards the station. He 
knew them; it was Ole and Bucks. 

But Bucks ! Never before or since was 
seen on a street of McCloud such a figure 
as Bucks, in his trousers and slippers, with 
his night-shirt free as he sailed down the 
wind. In another instant he was bounding 
up the stairs. Callahan told him. 

“ What have you done ?”he panted, throw- 
ing himself into the chair. Callahan told 
him. Bucks held his head in his hands 
while the boy talked. He turned to the 
sheet — asked quick for 59. 

“ She’s out of Callendar. I tried hard to 
stop her. I didn’t lose a second; she was 
gone.” 

Barely an instant Bucks studied the sheet. 
Routed out of a sound sleep after an eight- 
hour trick, and on such a night, by such a 
176 


Bucks 


message — the marvel was he could think at 
all, much less set a trap which should save 
59. In twenty minutes from the time Bucks 
took the key the two trains would be to- 
gether — could he save the passenger ? Cal- 
lahan didn’t believe it. 

A sharp, quick call brought Griffin. We 
had one of the brightest lads on the whole 
division at Griffin. Callahan, listening, 
heard Griffin answer. Bucks rattled a 
question. How the heart hangs on the 
faint, uncertain tick of a sounder when hu- 
man lives hang on it ! 

“ Where are your section men ?” asked 
Bucks. 

“ In bed at the section house.” 

“ Who’s with you ?” 

“ Night agent. Sheriff with two cowboy 
prisoners waiting to take 59.” 

Before the last word came, Bucks was 
back at him : 

To Opr. : 

Ask Sheriff release his prisoners to save passe nger-train. 
Go together to west switch house-track, open, and set it. 
Smash in section tool-house, get tools. Go to point of 
house-track curve, cut the rails, and point them to send 
runaway train from Ogalalla over the bluff into the 
river. BUCKS. 

M 


1 77 


Bucks 


The words flew off his fingers like sparks, . 
and another message crowded the wire be- 
hind it : 

To Agt. : 

Go to east switch, open, and set for passing-track. 
Flag 59, and run her on siding. If can’t get 59 into 
the clear, ditch the runaways. 

Bucks. 

They look old now. The ink is faded, 
and the paper is smoked with the fire of 
fifteen winters and bleached with the sun of 
fifteen summers. But to this day they hang 
there in their walnut frames, the original 
orders, just as Bucks scratched them off. 
They hang there in the dispatchers’ offices 
in the new depot. But in their present 
swell surroundings Bucks wouldn’t know 
them. It was Harvey Reynolds who took 
them off the other end of the wire — a boy 
in a thousand for that night and that min- 
ute. The instant the words flashed into 
the room he instructed the agent, grabbed 
an axe, and dashed out into the waiting- 
room, where the sheriff, Ed Banks, sat with 
his prisoners, the cowboys. 

“ Ed,” cried Harvey, “ there’s a runaway 
train from Ogalalla coming down the line 
178 


Bucks 


in the wind. If we can’t trap it here, it’ll 
knock 59 into kindling-wood. Turn the 
boys loose, Ed, and save the passenger-train. 
Boys, show the man and square yourselves 
right now. I don’t know what you’re here 
for ; but I believe it’s to save 59. Will you 
help?” 

The three men sprang to their feet ; Ed 
Banks slipped the handcuffs off in a trice. 
“ Never mind the rest of it. Save the pas- 
senger-train first,” he roared. Everybody 
from Ogalalla to Omaha knew Ed Banks. 

“ Which way ? How ?” cried the cow- 
boys, in a lather of excitement. 

Harvey Reynolds, beckoning as he ran, 
rushed out the door and up the track, his 
posse at his heels, stumbling into the gale 
like lunatics. 

“ Smash in the tool-house door,” panted 
Harvey as they neared it. 

Ed Banks seized the axe from his hands 
and took command as naturally as Dewey. 

“ Pick up that tie and ram her,” he cried, 
pointing to the door. “All together — now.” 

Harvey and the cowboys splintered the 
panel in a twinkling, and Banks, with a 
few clean strokes, cut an opening. The 
179 


Bucks 


cowboys, jumping together, ran in and be- 
gan fishing for tools in the dark. One got 
hold of a wrench ; the other, a pick. Har- 
vey caught up a clawbar, and Banks grabbed 
a spike-maul. In a bunch they ran for the 
point of the curve on the house-track. It 
lies there close to the verge of a limestone 
bluff that looms up fifty feet above the river. 

But it is one thing to order a contact 
opened, and another and very different 
thing to open it, at two in the morning on 
December twenty-fifth, by men who know 
no more about track-cutting than about 
logarithms. Side by side and shoulder to 
shoulder the man of the law and the men 
out of the law, the rough-riders and the 
railroad boy, pried and wrenched and clawed 
and struggled with the steel. While Har- 
vey and Banks clawed at the spikes the 
cowboys wrestled with the nuts on the bolts 
of the fish-plates. It was a baffle. The 
nuts wouldn’t twist, the spikes stuck like 
piles, sweat covered the assailants, Harvey 
went into a frenzy. “ Boys, we must work 
faster,” he cried, tugging at the frosty 
spikes; but flesh and blood could do no 
more. 

180 


Bucks 


“ There they come — there’s the runaway 
train — do you hear it ? I’m going to open 
the switch, anyhow,” Harvey shouted, start- 
ing up the track. “ Save yourselves.” 

Heedless of the warning, Banks struggled 
with the plate-bolts in a silent fury. Sud- 
denly he sprang to his feet. “ Give me the 
maul !” he cried. 

Raising the heavy tool like a tack-ham- 
mer he landed heavily on the bolt nuts; 
once, and again ; and they flew in a stream 
like bullets over the bluff. The taller cow- 
boy, bending close on his knees, raised a 
yell. The plates had given. Springing to 
the other rail, Banks stripped the bolts even 
after the mad train had shot into the gorge 
above them. They drove the pick under 
the loosened steel, and with a pry that bent 
the clawbar and a yell that reached Harvey, 
trembling at the switch, they tore away the 
stubborn contact, and pointed the rails over 
the precipice. 

The shriek of a locomotive whistle cut 
the wind. Looking east, Harvey had been 
watching 59’s headlight. She was pulling 
in on the siding. He still held the switch 
open to send the runaways into the trap 
181 


Bucks 


Bucks had set, if the passenger-train failed 
to get into the clear; but there was a 
minute yet — a bare sixty seconds — and 
Harvey had no idea of dumping ten thou- 
sand dollars’ worth of equipment into the 
river unless he had to. 

Suddenly, up went the safety signals from 
the east end. The ioi was coughing noisily 
up the passing- track — the line was clear. 
Banks and the cowboys, waiting breathless, 
saw Harvey with a determined lurch close 
the main-line contact. 

In the next breath the coalers, with the 
sweep of the gale in their frightful velocity, 
smashed over the switch and on. A rat- 
tling whirl of ballast and a dizzy clatter of 
noise, and before the frightened crew of 59 
could see what was against them, the run- 
away train was passed — gone ! 

“ I wasn’t going to stop here to-night,” 
muttered the engineer, as he stood with the 
conductor over Harvey’s shoulder at the 
operator’s desk a minute later and wiped 
the chill from his forehead with a piece of 
waste. “ We’d have met them in the canon.” 

Harvey was reporting to Bucks. Callahan 
heard it coming : “ Rails cut, but 59 safe. 

182 


Bucks 

Runaways went by here fully seventy miles 
an hour.” 

It was easy after that. Griffin is the foot 
of the grade; from there on, the runaway 
train had a hill to climb. Bucks had held 
2 50, the local passenger, sidetracked at Davis, 
thirty miles farther east. Sped by the wind, 
the runaways passed Davis, though not at 
half their highest speed. An instant later, 
250’s engine was cut loose, and started after 
them like a scared collie. Three miles east 
of Davis they were overhauled by the light 
engine. The fireman, Donahue, crawled out 
of the cab window, along the foot-rail, and 
down on the pilot, caught the ladder of the 
first car, and, running up, crept along to the 
leader and began setting brakes. Ten min- 
utes later they were brought back in triumph 
to Davis. 

When the multitude of orders was out of 
the way, Bucks wired Ed Banks to bring 
his cowboys down to McCloud on 60. 60 
was the east-bound passenger due at Mc- 
Cloud at 5.30 a.m. It turned out that the 
cowboys had been arrested for lassoing a 
Norwegian homesteader who had cut their 
wire. It was not a heinous offence, and 
183 


Bucks 


after it was straightened out by the inter- 
vention of Bucks — who was the whole thing 
then — they were given jobs lassoing sugar 
barrels in the train service. One of them, 
the tall fellow, is a passenger conductor on 
the high line yet. 

It was three o’clock that morning — the 
twenty-fifth of December in small letters, on 
the West End — before they got things de- 
cently straightened out : there was so much 
to do — orders to make and reports to take. 
Bucks, still on the key in his flowing robes 
and tumbling hair, sent and took them all. 
Then he turned the seat over to Callahan, 
and getting up for the first time in two 
hours, dropped into another chair. 

The very first thing Callahan received 
was a personal from Pat Francis, at Ogalalla, 
conductor of 59. It ^as for Bucks : 

Your mother is aboard 59. She was carried by Mc- 
Cloud in the Denver sleeper. Sending her back to you 
on 60. Merry Christmas. 

It came off the wire fast. Callahan, tak- 
ing it, didn’t think Bucks heard; though it’s 
probable he did hear. Anyway, Callahan 
threw the clip over towards him with a 
laugh. 


184 


Bucks 


“ Look there, old man. There’s your 
mother coming, after all your kicking — car- 
ried by on 59.” 

As the boy turned he saw the big dis- 
patcher’s head sink between his arms on the 
table. Callahan sprang to his side; but 
Bucks had fainted. 



Sankey’s Double Header 


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Sankey’s Double Header 


T HE oldest man in the train service 
didn’t pretend to say how long San- 
key had worked for the company. 

Pat Francis was a very old conductor ; 
but old man Sankey was a veteran when 
Pat Francis began braking. Sankey ran a 
passenger- train when Jimmie Brady was 
running — and Jimmie afterwards enlisted 
and was killed in the Custer fight. 

There was an odd tradition about San- 
key’s name. He was a tall, swarthy fellow, 
and carried the blood of a Sioux chief in his 
veins. It was in the time of the Black Hills 
excitement, when railroad men struck by 
the gold fever were abandoning their trains, 
even at way-stations, and striking across the 
divide for Clark’s crossing. Men to run the 
trains were hard to get, and Tom Porter, 
train - master, was putting in every man he 

189 


Sankey’s Double Header 

could pick up, without reference to age or 
color. 

Porter — he died at Julesburg afterwards 
— was a great jollier, and he wasn’t afraid 
of anybody on earth. 

One day a war-party of Sioux clattered 
into town. They tore around like a storm, 
and threatened to scalp everything, even to 
the local tickets. The head braves dashed 
in on Tom Porter, sitting in the dispatcher’s 
office up-stairs. The dispatcher was hiding 
under a loose plank in the baggage-room 
floor; Tom, being bald as a sand-hill, con- 
sidered himself exempt from scalping-par- 
ties. He was working a game of solitaire 
when they bore down on him, and interested 
them at once. That led to a parley, which 
ended in Porter’s hiring the whole band to 
brake on freight-trains. Old man Sankey 
is said to have been one of that original 
war-party. 

Now this is merely a caboose story — told 
on winter nights when trainmen get stalled 
in the snow drifting down from the Sioux 
country. But what follows is better attested. 

Sankey, to start with, had a peculiar name. 
An unpronounceable, unspellable, unman- 
190 


Sankey’s Double Header 

ageable name. I never heard it ; so I can’t 
give it. It was as hard to catch as an Ind- 
ian cur, and that name made more trouble 
on the pay-rolls than all the other names 
put together. Nobody at headquarters could 
handle it; it was never turned in twice alike, 
and they were always writing Tom Porter 
about the thing. Tom explained several 
times that it was Sitting Bull’s ambassador 
who was drawing that money, and that he 
usually signed the pay-roll with a tomahawk. 
But nobody at Omaha ever knew how to 
take a joke. 

The first time Tom went down he was 
called in very solemnly to explain again 
about the name ; and being in a hurry, and 
very tired of the whole business, Tom 
spluttered : 

“ Hang it, don’t bother me any more about 
that name. If you can’t read it, make it 
Sankey, and be done with it.” 

They took Tom at his word. They act- 
ually did make it Sankey; and that’s how 
our oldest conductor came to bear the name 
of the famous singer. And more I may 
say: good name as it was — and is — the 
Sioux never disgraced it. 

191 


Sankey’s Double Header 

Probably every old traveller on the sys- 
tem knew Sankey. He was not only al- 
ways ready to answer questions, but, what 
is much more, always ready to answer the 
same question twice : it is that which makes 
conductors gray -headed and spoils their 
chances for heaven — answering the same 
questions over and over again. Children 
were apt to be a bit startled at first sight of 
Sankey — he was so dark. But he had a 
very quiet smile, that always made them 
friends after the second trip through the 
sleepers, and they sometimes ran about ask- 
ing for him after he had left the train. 

Of late years — and it is this that hurts — 
these very same children, grown ever so 
much bigger, and riding again to or from 
California or Japan or Australia, will ask 
when they reach the West End about the 
Indian conductor. 

But the conductors who now run the over- 
land trains pause at the question, check- 
ing over the date limits on the margins of 
the coupon tickets, and, handing the enve- 
lopes back, will look at the children and say, 
slowly, “ He isn’t running any more.” 

192 


\ ~ 


Sankey’s Double Header 


I 

If you have ever gone over our line to 
the mountains or to the coast you may re- 
member at McCloud, where they change en- 
gines and set the diner in or out, the pretty 
little green park to the east of the depot 
with a row of catalpa-trees along the plat- 
form line. It looks like a glass of spring 
water. 

If it happened to be Sankey’s run and a 
regular West End day, sunny and delight- 
ful, you would be sure to see standing un- 
der the catalpas a shy, dark-skinned girl of 
fourteen or fifteen years, silently watching 
the preparations for the departure of the 
Overland. 

And after the new engine had been back- 
ed, champing down, and harnessed to its 
long string of vestibuled sleepers ; after the 
air hose had been connected and the air 
valves examined; after the engineer had 
swung out of his cab, filled his cups, and 
swung in again; after the fireman and his 
helper had disposed of their slice -bar and 
shovel, and given the tender a final sprinkle, 

n 193 


Sankey’s Double Header 

and the conductor had walked leisurely for- 
ward, compared time with the engineer, and 
cried, “ All Abo-o-o-ard !” 

TLen, as your coach moved slowly ahead, 
you might notice under the receding catal- 
pas the little girl waving a parasol, or a 
handkerchief, at the outgoing train — that 
is, at conductor Sankey ; for she was his 
daughter, Neeta Sankey. Her mother was 
Spanish, and died when Neeta was a wee 
bit. Neeta and the Limited were Sankey’s 
whole world. 

When Georgie Sinclair began pulling the 
Limited, running west opposite Foley, he 
struck up a great friendship with Sankey. 
Sankey, though he was hard to start, was 
full of early-day stories. Georgie, it seemed, 
had the faculty of getting him to talk ; per- 
haps because when he was pulling Sankey’s 
train he made extraordinary efforts to keep 
on time — time was a hobby with Sankey. 
Foley said he was so careful of it that when 
he was off duty he let his watch stop just 
to save time. 

Sankey loved to breast the winds and the 
floods and the snows, and if he could get 
home pretty near on schedule, with every- 

IQA 


Sankey’s Double Header 

body else late, he was happy; and in re- 
spect of that, as Sankey used to say, Georgie 
Sinclair could come nearer gratifying San- 
key’s ambition than any runner we had. 

Even the firemen used to observe that 
the young engineer, always neat, looked still 
neater the days that he took out Sankey’s 
train. By -and -by there was an introduc- 
tion under the catalpas; after that it was 
noticed that Georgie began wearing gloves 
on the engine — not kid gloves, but yellow 
dogskin — and black silk shirts ; he bought 
them in Denver. 

Then — an odd way engineers have of 
paying compliments — when Georgie pulled 
into town on No. 2, if it was Sankey’s train, 
the big sky-scraper would give a short, 
hoarse scream, a most peculiar note, just as 
they drew past Sankey’s housed which stood 
on the brow of the hill west of the yards. 
Then Neeta would know that No. 2 and 
her father, and naturally Mr. Sinclair, were 
in again, and all safe and sound. 

When the railway trainmen held their 
division fair at McCloud, there was a lan- 
tern to be voted to the most popular con- 
ductor — a gold-plated lantern with a green 
195 


Sankey’s Double Header 

curtain in the globe. Cal Stewart and Ben 
Doton, who were very swell conductors, and 
great rivals, were the favorites, and had the 
town divided over their chances for win- 
ning it. 

But during the last moments Georgie Sin- 
clair stepped up to the booth and cast a 
storm of votes for old man Sankey. Doton’s 
friends and Stewart’s laughed at first, but 
Sankev’s votes kept pouring in amazingly. 
The favorites grew frightened ; they pooled 
their issues by throwing Stewart’s vote to 
Doton; but it wouldn’t do. Georgie Sin- 
clair, with a crowd of engineers — Cameron, 
Moore, Foley, Bat Mullen, and Burns — 
came back at them with such a swing that 
in the final round up they fairly swamped 
Doton. Sankey took the lantern by a thou- 
sand votes, but I understood it cost Georgie 
and his friends a pot of money. 

Sankey said all the time he didn’t want 
the lantern, but, just the same, he always 
carried that particular lantern, with his full 
name, Sylvester Sankey, ground into the 
glass just below the green mantle. Pretty 
soon — Neeta being then eighteen — it was 
rumored that Sinclair was engaged to Miss 
196 


Sankey’s Double Header 

Sankey — was going to marry her. And 
marry her he did ; though that was not un- 
til after the wreck in the Blackwood gorge, 
the time of the Big Snow. 

It goes yet by just that name on the West 
End ; for never was such a winter and such 
a snow known on the plains and in the 
mountains. One train on the northern di- 
vision was stalled six weeks that winter, 
and one whole coach was chopped up for 
kindling-wood. 

But the great and desperate effort of the 
company was to hold open the main line, 
the artery which connected the two coasts. 
It was a hard winter on trainmen. Week 
after week the snow kept falling and blow- 
ing. The trick was not to clear the line ; it 
was to keep it clear. Every day we sent 
out trains with the fear we should not see 
them again for a week. 

Freight we didn’t pretend to move; local 
passenger business had to be abandoned. 
Coal, to keep our engines and our towns sup- 
plied, we were obliged to carry, and after that 
all the brains and the muscle and the mo- 
tive-power were centred on keeping i and 
2, our through passenger - trains, running. 

197 


Sankey’s Double Header 

Our trainmen worked like Americans; 
there were no cowards on our rolls. But 
after too long a strain men become ex- 
hausted, benumbed, indifferent — reckless 
even. The nerves give out, and will power 
seems to halt on indecision — but decision is 
the life of the fast train. 

None of our conductors stood the hope- 
less fight like Sankey. Sankey was patient, 
taciturn, untiring, and, in a conflict with the 
elements, ferocious. All the fighting-blood 
of his ancestors seemed to course again in 
that struggle with the winter king. I can 
see him yet, on bitter days, standing along- 
side the track, in a heavy pea-jacket and 
Napoleon boots, a sealskin cap drawn snug- 
ly over his straight, black hair, watching, 
ordering, signalling, while No. i, with its 
frost-bitten sleepers behind a rotary, strug- 
gled to buck through the ten and twenty 
foot cuts, which lay bankful of snow west 
of McCloud. 

Not until April did it begin to look as if 
we should win out. A dozen times the line 
was all but choked on us. And then, 
when snow-ploughs were disabled and train 
crews desperate, there came a storm that 
198 


Sankey’s Double Header 

discounted the worst blizzard of the winter. 
As the reports rolled in on the morning of 
the 5th, growing worse as they grew thick- 
er, Neighbor, dragged out, played out, men- 
tally and physically, threw up his hands. 
The 6th it snowed all day, and on Satur- 
day morning the section men reported thirty 
feet in the Blackwood canon. 

It was six o’clock when we got the word, 
and daylight before we got the rotary against 
it. They bucked away till noon with dis- 
couraging results, and came in with their 
gear smashed and a driving- rod fractured. 
It looked as if we were beaten. 

No. 1 got into McCloud eighteen hours 
late; it was Sankey’s and Sinclair’s run 
west. 

There was a long council in the round- 
house. The rotary was knocked out ; coal 
was running low in the chutes. If the line 
wasn’t kept open for the coal from the 
mountains it was plain we should be tied 
until we could ship it from Iowa or Mis- 
souri. West of Medicine Pole there was 
another big rotary working east, with plenty 
of coal behind her, but she was reported 
stuck fast in the Cheyenne Hills. 

199 


Sankey’s Double Header 

Foley made suggestions and Dad Sinclair 
made suggestions. Everybody had a sug- 
gestion left; the trouble was, Neighbor said, 
they didn’t amount to anything, or were im- 
possible. 

“ It’s a dead block, boys,” announced 
Neighbor, sullenly, after everybody had done. 
“ We are beaten unless we can get No. i 
through to-day. Look there; by the holy 
poker it’s snowing again !” 

The air was dark in a minute with whirl- 
ing clouds. Men turned to the windows 
and quit talking ; every fellow felt the same 
— at least, all but one. Sankey, sitting 
back of the stove, was making tracings on 
his overalls with a piece of chalk. 

“You might as well unload your passen- 
gers, Sankey,” said Neighbor. “ You'll never 
get ’em through this winter.” 

And it was then that Sankey proposed 
his Double Header. 

He devised a snow-plough which combined 
in one monster ram about all the good ma- 
terial we had left, and submitted the scheme 
to Neighbor. Neighbor studied it and 
hacked at it all he could, and brought it 
over to the office. It was like staking 
200 


Sankey’s Double Header 

everything on the last cast of the dice, but 
we were in the state of mind which precedes 
a desperate venture. It was talked over for 
an hour, and orders were finally given by 
the superintendent to rig up the Double 
Header and get against the snow as quick 
as it could be made ready. 

All that day and most of the night Neigh- 
bor worked twenty men on Sankey’s device. 
By Sunday morning it was in such shape 
that we began to take heart. 

“ If she don’t get through she’ll get back 
again, and that’s what most of ’em don’t do,” 
growled Neighbor, as he and Sankey showed 
the new ram to the engineers. 

They had taken the 566, George Sinclair’s 
engine, for one head, and Burns’s 497 for 
the other. Behind these were Kennedy 
with the 314 and Cameron with the 296. 
The engines were set in pairs, headed each 
way, and buckled up like pack-mules. Over 
the pilots and stacks of the head engines 
rose the tremendous ploughs which were to 
tackle the toughest drifts ever recorded, be- 
fore or since, on the West End. The ram 
was designed to work both ways. Under the 
coal each tender was loaded with pig-iron e 
201 


Sankey’s Double Header 

The beleaguered passengers on No. i, 
side-tracked in the yards, watched the prep- 
arations Sankey was making to clear the 
line. Every amateur on the train had his 
camera snapping at the ram. The town, 
gathered in a single great mob, looked si- 
lently on, and listened to the frosty notes of 
the sky-scrapers as they went through their 
preliminary manoeuvres. Just as the final 
word was given by Sankey, in charge, the 
sun burst through the fleecy clouds, and a 
wild cheer followed the ram out of the west- 
ern yard — it was good-luck to see the sun 
again. 

Little Neeta, up on the hill, must have 
seen them as they pulled out; surely she 
heard the choppy, ice-bitten screech of the 
566 ; that was never forgotten whether the 
service was special or regular. Besides, the 
head cab of the ram carried this time not 
only Georgie Sinclair but her father as well. 
Sankey could handle a slice-bar as well as 
a punch, and rode on the head engine, where, 
if anywhere, the big chances hovered. What 
he was not capable of in the train service 
we never knew, because he was stronger than 
any emergency that ever confronted him. 

202 


Sankey’s Double Header 

Bucking snow is principally brute force ; 
there is little coaxing. Just west of the 
bluffs, like code signals between a fleet of 
cruisers, there was a volley of sharp tooting, 
and in a minute the four ponderous engines, 
two of them in the back motion, fires white 
and throats bursting, steamed wildly into the 
canon. 

Six hundred feet from the first cut Sin- 
clair’s whistle signalled again; Burns and 
Cameron and Kennedy answered, and then, 
literally turning the monster ram loose 
against the dazzling mountain, the crews 
settled themselves for the shock. 

At such a moment there is nothing to be 
done. If anything goes wrong eternity is 
too close to consider. There comes a muf- 
fled drumming on the steam-chests — a stag- 
ger and a terrific impact — and then the re- 
coil like the stroke of a trip-hammer. The 
snow shoots into the air fifty feet, and the 
wind carries a cloud of fleecy confusion over 
the ram and out of the cut. The cabs were 
buried in white, and the great steel frames 
of the engines sprung like knitting-needles 
under the frightful blow. 

Pausing for hardly a breath, the signalling 

203 


Sankey’s Double Header 

again began. Then the backing; up and 
up and up the line ; and again the massive 
machines were hurled screaming into the 
cut 

“ You’re getting there, Georgie,” exclaimed 
Sankey, when the rolling and lurching had 
stopped. No one else could tell a thing 
about it, for it was snow and snow and 
snow; above and behind, and ahead and 
beneath. Sinclair coughed the flakes out 
of his eyes and nose and mouth like a baf- 
fled collie. He looked doubtful of the claim 
until the mist had blown clear and the quiv- 
ering monsters were again recalled for a 
dash. Then it was plain that Sankey ’s in- 
stinct was right ; they were gaining. 

Again they went in, lifting a very ava- 
lanche over the stacks, packing the banks 
of the cut with walls hard as ice. Again as 
the drivers stuck they raced in a frenzy, and 
into the shriek of the wind went the un- 
earthly scrape of the overloaded safeties. 

Slowly and sullenly the machines were 
backed again. 

“She’s doing the work, Georgie,” cried 
Sankey. “ For that kind of a cut she’s as 
good as a rotary. Look everything over 

204. 


Sankey’ s Double Header 

now while I go back and see how the boys 
are standing it. Then we’ll give her one 
more, and give it the hardest kind.” 

And they did give her one more — and 
another. Men at Santiago put up no stout- 
er fight than they made that Sunday morn- 
ing in the canon of the Blackwood. Once 
and twice more they went in. And the 
second time the bumping drummed more 
deeply; the drivers held, pushed, panted, 
and gained against the white wall — heaved 
and stumbled ahead — and with a yell from 
Sinclair and Sankey and the fireman, the 
Double Header shot her nose into the clear 
over the Blackwood gorge. As engine af- 
ter engine flew past the divided walls, each 
cab took up the cry — it was the wildest 
shout that ever crowned victory. 

Through they went and half-way across 
the bridge before they could check their 
monster catapult. Then at a half-full they 
shot it back at the cut — it worked as well 
one way as the other. 

“ The thing is done,” declared Sankey. 
Then they got into position up the line for 
a final shoot to clean the eastern cut and 
to get the head for a dash across the bridge 
205 


Sankey’s Double Header 

into the west end of the canon, where lay 
another mountain of snow to split. 

“ Look the machines over close, boys,” 
said Sankey to the engineers. “ If noth- 
ing’s sprung we’ll take a full head across 
the gorge — the bridge will carry anything 
— and buck the west cut. Then after we 
get No. i through this afternoon Neighbor 
can get his baby cabs in here and keep ’em 
chasing all night ; but it’s done snowing,” 
he added, looking into the leaden sky. 

He had everything figured out for the 
master- mechanic — the shrewd, kindly old 
man. There’s no man on earth like a 
good Indian; and for that matter none 
like a bad one. Sankey knew by a mili- 
tary instinct just what had to be done and 
how to do it. If he had lived he was to 
have been assistant superintendent. That 
was the word which leakecT from headquar- 
ters after he got killed. 

And with a volley of jokes between the 
cabs, and a laughing and a yelling between 
toots, down went Sankey’s Double Header 
again into the Blackwood gorge. 

At the same moment, by an awful mis- 
understanding of orders, down came the big 
206 


Sankey’s Double Header 

rotary from the West End with a dozen 
cars of coal behind it. Mile after mile it 
had wormed east towards Sankey’s ram, 
burrowed through the western cut of the 
Blackwood, crashed through the drift San- 
key was aiming for, and whirled then out 
into the open, dead against him, at forty 
miles an hour. Each train, in order to make 
the grade and the blockade, was straining 
the cylinders. 

Through the swirling snow which half 
hid the bridge and swept between the rush- 
ing ploughs Sinclair saw them coming — 
he yelled. Sankey saw them a fraction of 
a second later, and while Sinclair struggled 
with the throttle and the air, Sankey gave 
the alarm through the whistle to the poor 
fellows in the blind pockets behind. But 
the track was at the worst. Where there 
was no snow there were whiskers ; oil itself 
couldn’t have been worse to stop on. It 
was the old and deadly peril of fighting 
blockades from both ends on a single track. 

The great rams of steel and fire had done 
their work, and with their common enemy 
overcome they dashed at each other fren- 
zied across the Blackwood gorge. 

207 


Sankey’s Double Header 

The fireman at the first cry shot out the 
side. Sankey yelled at Sinclair to jump. 
But George shook his head : he never would 
jump. Without hesitating an instant, San- 
key caught him in his arms, tore him from 
the levers, planted a mighty foot, and hurled 
Sinclair like a block of coal through the 
gangway out into the gorge. The other 
cabs were already emptied; but the in- 
stant’s delay in front cost Sankey’s life. 
Before he could turn the rotary crashed 
into the 566. They reared like mountain 
lions, and pitched headlong into the gorge ; 
Sankey went under them. 

He could have saved himself ; he chose 
to save George. There wasn’t time to do 
both; he had to choose and he chose in- 
stinctively. Did he, maybe, think in that 
flash of Neeta and of whom she needed 
most — of a young and a stalwart protector 
better than an old and a failing one ? I do 
not know; I know only what he did. 

Every one who jumped got clear. Sinclair 
lit in twenty feet of snow, and they pulled 
him out with a rope ; he wasn’t scratched ; 
even the bridge was not badly strained. 
No. 1 pulled over ft next day. Sankey was 
208 


Sankey’s Double Header 

right : there was no more snow ; not enough 
to hide the dead engines on the rocks : the 
line was open. 

There never was a funeral in McCloud 
like Sankey’s. George Sinclair and Neeta 
followed together; and of mourners there 
were as many as there were people. Every 
engine on the division carried black for 
thirty days. 

His contrivance for fighting snow has 
never yet been beaten on the high line. It 
is perilous to go against a drift behind it — 
something has to give. 

But it gets there — as Sankey got there — 
always; and in time of blockade and des- 
peration on the West End they still send 
out Sankey’s Double Header; though San- 
key — so the conductors tell the children, 
travelling east or travelling west — Sankey 
isn’t running any more. 



Siclone Clark 










' 

. 

































n B 















/ 




, 































Siclone Clark 


“nr'HERE goes a fellow that walks 
I like Siclone Clark,” exclaimed Duck 
Middleton. Duck was sitting in the 
train-master’s office with a group of engi- 
neers. He was one of the black-listed strik- 
ers, and runs an engine now down on the 
Santa Fe. But at long intervals Duck gets 
back to revisit the scenes of his early tri- 
umphs. The men who surrounded him 
were once at deadly odds with Duck and 
his chums, though now the ancient enmi- 
ties seem forgotten, and Duck — the once 
ferocious Duck — sits occasionally among 
the new men and gossips about early days 
on the West End. 

“Do you remember Siclone, Reed?” asked 
Duck, calling to me in the private office. 

“ Remember him?” I echoed. “ Did any- 
body who ever knew Siclone forget him ?” 

213 


Siclone Clark 


“ I fired passenger for Siclone twenty 
years ago,” resumed Duck. “ He walked 
just like that fellow; only he was quicker. I 
reckon you fellows don’t know what a snap 
you have here now,” he continued, address- 
ing the men around him. “ Track fenced ; 
ninety -pound rails; steel bridges; stone 
culverts; slag ballast; sky-scrapers. No 
wonder you get chances to haul such nobs 
as Lilioukalani and Schley and Dewey, and 
cut out ninety miles an hour on tangents. 

“ When I was firing for Siclone the road- 
bed was just off the scrapers ; the dumps 
were soft ; pile bridges ; paper culverts ; 
fifty-six-pound rails ; not a fence west of 
Buffalo gap, and the plains black with Texas 
steers. We never closed our cylinder 
cocks ; the hiss of the steam frightened the 
cattle worse than the whistle, and we never 
knew when we were going to find a bunch 
of critters on the track. 

“ The first winter I came out was great 
for snow, and I was a tenderfoot. The 
cuts made good wind-breaks, and whenever 
there was a norther they were chuck full of 
cattle. Every time a train ploughed through 
the snow it made a path on the track. When- 
214 


Siclone Clark 


ever the steers wanted to move they would 
take the middle of the track single file, 
and string out mile after mile. Talk about 
fast schedules and ninety miles an hour. 
You had to poke along with your cylinders 
spitting, and just whistle and yell — sort of 
blow them off into the snow-drifts. 

“ One day Siclone and I were going west 
on 59, and we were late ; for that matter we 
were always late. Simpson coming against 
us on 60 had caught a bunch of cattle in the 
rock-cut, just west of the Sappie, and killed 
a couple. When we got there there must 
have been a thousand head of steers mous- 
ing around the dead ones. Siclone — he 
used to be a cowboy, you know — Siclone 
said they were holding a wake. At any 
rate, they were still coming from every di- 
rection and as far as you could see. 

“ 4 Hold on, Siclone, and I’ll chase them 
out,’ I said. 

“ 4 That’s the stuff, Duck,’ says he. 4 Get 
after them and see what you can do.’ He 
looked kind of queer, but I never thought 
anything. I picked up a jack-bar and start- 
ed up the track. 

“ The first fellow I tackled looked lazy, 
. 215 


Siclone Clark 


but he started full quick when I hit him. 
Then he turned around to inspect me, and 
I noticed his horns were the broad-gauge 
variety. While I whacked another the first 
one put his head down and began to snort 
and paw the ties; then they all began to 
bellow at once ; it looked smoky. I dropped 
the jack-bar and started for the engine, and 
about fifty of them started for me. 

“ I never had an idea steers could run so ; 
you could have played checkers on my 
heels all the way back. If Siclone hadn’t 
come out and jollied them, I’d never have 
got back in the world. I just jumped the 
pilot and went clear over against the boiler- 
head. Siclone claimed I tried to climb the 
smoke-stack; but he was excited. Any- 
way, he stood out there with a shovel and 
kept the whole bunch off me. I thought 
they would kill him ; but I never tried to 
chase range steers on foot again. 

“ In the spring we got the rains ; not like 
you get now, but cloud-bursts. The sec- 
tion men were good fellows, only sometimes 
we would get into a storm miles from a sec- 
tion gang and strike a place where we 
couldn’t see a thing. 

216 


Siclone Clark 


“ Then Siclone would stop the train, take 
a bar, and get down ahead and sound the 
road-bed. Many and many a wash-out he 
struck that way which would have wrecked 
our train and wound up our ball of yarn in 
a minute. Often and often Siclone would 
go into his division without a dry thread on 
him. 

“Those were different days,” mused the 
grizzled striker. “ The old boys are scat- 
tered now all over this broad land. The 
strike did it; and you fellows have the 
snap. But what I wonder, often and often, 
is whether Siclone is really alive or not.” 


I 

Siclone Clark was one of the two cow- 
boys who helped Harvey Reynolds and 
Ed Banks save 59 at Griffin the night the 
coal-train ran down from Ogalalla. They 
were both taken into the service; Siclone, 
after a while, went to wiping. 

When Bucks asked his name, Siclone 
answered, “ S. Clark.” 

“What’s your full name?” asked Bucks. 

. 217 


Siclone Clark 


“S. Clark;’ 

“ But what does S. stand for ?” persisted 
Bucks. 

“ Stands for Cyclone, I reckon ; don’t it ?” 
retorted the cowboy, with some annoyance. 

It was not usual in those days on the 
plains to press a man too closely about 
his name. There might be reasons why it 
would not be esteemed courteous. 

“ I reckon it do,” replied Bucks, dropping 
into Siclone’s grammar; and without a 
quiver he registered the new man as 
Siclone Clark ; and his checks always read 
that way. The name seemed to fit; he 
adopted it without any objection; and, after 
everybody came to know him, it fitted so 
well that Bucks was believed to have sec- 
ond sight when he named the hair-brained 
fireman. He could get up a storm quicker 
than any man on the division, and, if he 
felt so disposed, stop one quicker. 

In spite of his eccentricities, which were 
many, and his headstrong way of doing 
some things, Siclone Clark was a good 
engineer, and deserved a better fate than 
the one that befell him. Though — who can 
tell? — it may have been just to his liking. 

218 


Siclone Clark 


The strike was the worst thing that ever 
happened to Siclone. He was one of those 
big-hearted, violent fellows who went into 
it loaded with enthusiasm. He had noth- 
ing to gain by it ; at least, nothing to speak 
of. But the idea that somebody on the East 
End needed their help led men like Siclone 
in; and they thought it a cinch that the com- 
pany would have to take them all back. 

The consequence was that, when we stag- 
gered along without them, men like Siclone, 
easily aroused, naturally of violent passions, 
and with no self-restraint, stopped at noth- 
ing to cripple the service. And they looked 
on the men who took their places as en- 
titled neither to liberty nor life. 

When our new men began coming from 
the Reading to replace the strikers, every 
one wondered who would get Siclone 
Clark’s engine, the 313. Siclone had gen- 
tly sworn to kill the first man who took 
out the 313 — and bar nobody. 

Whatever others t thought of Siclone’s 
vaporings, they counted for a good deal on 
the West End; nobody wanted trouble 
with him. 

Even Neighbor, who feared no man, sort 

219 


Siclone Clark 


of let the 313 lay in her stall as long as 
possible, after the trouble began. 

Nothing was said about it. Threats can- 
not be taken cognizance of officially; we 
were bombarded with threats all the time; 
they had long since ceased to move us. Yet 
Siclone’s engine stayed in the round-house. 

Then, after Foley and McTerza and 
Sinclair, came Fitzpatrick from the East. 
McTerza was put on the mails, and, com- 
ing down one day on the White Flyer, he 
blew a cylinder-head out of the 416. 

Fitzpatrick was waiting to take her out 
when she came stumping in on one pair of 
drivers — for we were using engines worse 
than horseflesh then. But of course the 
416 was put out. The only gig left in 
the house was the 313. 

I imagine Neighbor felt the finger of fate 
in it. The mail had to go. The time had 
come for the 313; he ordered her fired. 

“ The man that ran this engine swore he 
would kill the man that took her out,” said 
Neighbor, sort of incidentally, as Fitz stood 
by waiting for her to steam. 

“ I suppose that means me,” said Fitz- 
patrick. 


„ 220 


Siclone Clark 


“ I suppose it does.” 

“ Whose engine is it ?” 

“ Siclone Clark’s.” 

Fitzpatrick shifted to the other leg. 

“ Did he say what I would be doing while 
this was going on ?” 

Something in Fitzpatrick’s manner made 
Neighbor laugh. Other things crowded in 
and no more was said. 

No more was thought in fact. The 313 
rolled as kindly for Fitzpatrick as for Si- 
clone, and the new engineer, a quiet fellow 
like Foley, only a good bit heavier, went on 
and off her with never a word for anybody. 

One day Fitzpatrick dropped into a bar- 
ber shop to get shaved. In the next chair 
lay Siclone Clark. Siclone got through 
first, and, stepping over to the table to get 
his hat, picked up Fitzpatrick’s, by mistake, 
and walked out with it. He discovered his 
change just as Fitz got out of his chair. 
Siclone came back, replaced the hat on the 
table — it had Fitzpatrick’s name pasted in 
the crown— took up his own hat, and, as Fitz 
reached for his, looked at him. 

Everyone in the shop caught their breaths. 

“ Is your name Fitzpatrick ?” 

221 


Siclone Clark 


“Yes, sir” 

“ Mine is Clark.” 

Fitzpatrick put on his hat. 

“You’re running the 313 , 1 believe?” con- 
tinued Siclone. 

“ Yes, sir.” 

“ That’s my engine.” 

“ I thought it belonged to the company.” 

“ Maybe it does ; but I’ve agreed to kill 
the man that takes her out before this trouble 
is settled,” said Siclone, amiably. 

Fitzpatrick met him steadily. “ If you’ll 
let me know when it takes place, I’ll try and 
be there.” 

“ I don’t jump on any man without fair 
warning ; any of the boys will tell you that,” 
continued Siclone. “ Maybe you didn’t 
know my word was out?” 

Fitzpatrick hesitated. “ I’m not looking 
for trouble with any man,” he replied, guard- 
edly. “ But since you’re disposed to be fair 
about notice, it’s only fair to you to say that 
I did know your word was out.” 

“ Still you took her ?” 

“ It was my orders.” 

“My word is out; the boys know it is 

good. I don’t jump any man without fair 
222 


Siclone Clark 


warning. I know you now, Fitzpatrick, and 
the next time I see you, look out,” and with- 
out more ado Siclone walked out of the 
shop greatly to the relief of the barber, if 
not of Fitz. 

Fitzpatrick may have wiped a little sweat 
from his face ; but he said nothing — only 
walked down to the round-house and took 
out the 313 as usual for his run. 

A week passed before the two men met 
again. One night Siclone with a crowd of 
the strikers ran into half a dozen of the new 
men, Fitzpatrick among them, and there 
was a riot. It was Siclone’s time to carry 
out his intention, for Fitzpatrick would have 
scorned to try to get away. No tree ever 
breasted a tornado more sturdily than the 
Irish engineer withstood Siclone; but when 
Ed Banks got there with his wrecking crew 
and straightened things out, Fitzpatrick was 
picked up for dead. That night Siclone 
disappeared. 

Warrants were gotten out and searchers 
put after him ; yet nobody could or would 
apprehend him. It was generally under- 
stood that the sudden disappearance was 
one of Siclone’s freaks. If the ex-cowboy 
223 


Siclone Clark 


had so determined he would not have hid- 
den to keep out of anybody’s way. I have 
sometimes pondered whether shame hadn’t 
something to do with it. His tremendous 
physical strength was fit for so much better 
things than beating other men that maybe 
he, himself, sort of realized it after the storm 
had passed. 

Down east of the depot grounds at 
McCloud stands, or stood, a great barnlike 
hotel, built in boom days, and long a favorite 
resting-place for invalids and travellers en 
route to California by easy stages. It was 
nicknamed the barracks. Many railroad 
men boarded there, and the new engineers 
liked it because it was close to the round- 
house and away from the strikers. 

Fitzpatrick, without a whine or a com- 
plaint, was put to bed in the barracks, and 
Holmes Kay, one of our staff surgeons, was 
given charge of the case; a trained nurse 
was provided besides. Nobody thought the 
injured man would live. But after every 
care was given him, we turned our attention 
to the troublesome task of operating the 
road. 

The 313, whether it happened so, or 

224 


Siclone Clark 


whether Neighbor thought it well to drop 
the disputed machine temporarily, was not 
taken out again for three weeks. She was 
looked on as a hoodoo, and nobody want- 
ed her. Foley refused point-blank one day 
to take her, claiming that he had troubles 
of his own. Then, one day, something 
happened to McTerza’s engine; we were 
stranded for a locomotive, and the 3 1 3 was 
brought out for McTerza; he didn’t like it 
a bit. 

Meantime nothing had been seen or 
heard of Siclone. That, in fact, was the 
reason Neighbor urged for using his en- 
gine ; but it seemed as if every time the 313 
went out it brought out Siclone, not to 
speak of worse things. 

That morning about three o’clock the un- 
lucky engine was coupled on to the White 
Flyer. The night boy at the barracks al- 
ways got up a hot lunch for the incoming 
and outgoing crews on the mail run, and 
that morning when he was through he for- 
got to turn off the lamp under his coffee- 
tank. It overheated the counter, and in a 
few minutes the wood-work was ablaze. If 
the frightened boy had emptied the coffee 
p 225 


Siclone Clark 


on the counter he could have put the fire 
out; but instead he ran out to give the 
alarm, and started up-stairs to arouse the 
guests. 

There were at least fifty people asleep 
in the house, travelling and railway men. 
Being a wooden building it was a quick 
prey, and in an incredibly short time the 
flames were leaping through the second- 
story windows. 

When I got down men were jumping in 
every direction from the burning hotel. 
Railroaders swarmed around, busy with 
schemes for getting the people out, for 
none are more quick-witted in time of 
panic. Short as the opportunity was there 
were many pretty rescues, until the flames, 
shooting up, cut off the stairs, and left the 
helpers nothing for it but to stand and 
watch the destruction of the long, rambling 
building. Half a dozen of us looked from 
the dispatchers’ offices in the second story 
of the depot. We had agreed that the peo- 
ple were all out, when Foley below gave a 
cry and pointed to the south gable. Away 
up under the eaves at the third -story win- 
dow we saw a face — it was Fitzpatrick. 

226 


Siclone Clark 


Everybody had forgotten Fitzpatrick and 
his nurse. Behind, as the flames lighted 
the opening, we could see the nurse strug- 
gling to get him to the window. It was 
plain that the engineer was in no condition 
to help himself ; the two men were in dead- 
ly peril ; a great cry went up. 

The crowd swarmed like ants around to 
the south end ; a dozen men called for lad- 
ders ; but there were no ladders. They 
called for volunteers to go in after the two 
men ; but the stairs were long since a fur- 
nace. There were men in plenty to take 
any kind of chance, however slight, but no 
chance offered. 

The nurse ran to and from the window, 
seeking a loop-hole for escape. Fitzpatrick 
dragged himself higher on the casement to 
get out of the smoke which rolled over him 
in choking bursts, and looked down on the 
crowd. They begged him to jump — held 
out their arms frantically. The two men 
again side by side waved a hand; it looked 
like a farewell. There was no calling from 
them, no appeal. The nurse would not de- 
sert his charge, and we saw it all. 

Suddenly there was a cry below, keener 
22 7 


Siclone Clark 


than the confused shouting of the crowd, 
and one running forward parted the men 
at the front and, clearing the fence, jumped 
into the yard under the burning gable. 

Before people recognized him a lariat 
was swinging over his head — it was Siclone 
Clark. The rope left his arm like a slung- 
shot and flew straight at Fitzpatrick. Not 
seeing, or confused, he missed it, and the 
rope, with a groan from the crowd, settled 
back. The agile cowboy caught it again 
into a loop and shot it upward, that time 
fairly over Fitzpatrick’s head. 

“ Make fast !” roared Siclone. Fitzpat- 
rick shouted back, and the two men above 
drew taut. Hand over hand Siclone Clark 
crept up, like a monkey, bracing his feet 
against the smoking clapboards, edging 
away from the vomiting windows, swing- 
ing on the single strand of horse-hair, and 
followed by a hundred prayers unsaid. 

Men who didn’t know what tears were 
tried to cry out to keep the choking from 
their throats. It seemed an age before he 
covered the last five feet, and the men above 
caught frantically at his hands. 

Drawing himself over the casement, he 
228 


Siclone Clark 


was lost with them a moment; then, from 
behind a burst of smoke, they saw him rig- 
ging a maverick saddle on Fitzpatrick ; saw 
Fitzpatrick lifted by Clark and the nurse 
over the sill, lowered like a wooden tie, 
whirling and swinging, down into twenty 
arms below. Before the trainmen had got 
the engineer loose, the nurse, following, slid 
like a cat down the incline ; but not an in- 
stant too soon. A tongue of flame lit the 
gable from below and licked the horse-hair 
up into a curling, frizzling thread ; and Si- 
clone stood alone in the upper casement. 

It seemed for the moment he stood there 
the crowd would go mad. The shock and 
the shouting seemed to confuse him ; it may 
have been the hot air took his breath. They 
yelled to him to jump; but he swayed un- 
certainly. Once, an instant after that, he 
was seen to look down ; then he drew back 
from the casement. . I never saw him again. 

The flames wrapped the building in a yel- 
low fury ; by daylight the big barracks were 
a smouldering pile of ruins. So little water 
was thrown that it was nearly nightfall be- 
fore we could get into the wreck. The 
tragedy had blotted out the feud between 
229 


Siclone Clark 


the strikers and the new men. Side by 
side they worked, as side by side Siclone 
and Fitzpatrick had stood in the morning, 
striving to uncover the mystery of the miss- 
ing man. Next day twice as many men 
were in the ruins. 

Fitzpatrick, while we were searching, 
called continually for Siclone Clark. We 
didn’t tell him the truth ; indeed, we didn’t 
know it; nor do we yet know it. Every 
brace, every beam, every brick was taken 
from the charred pile. Every foot of cin- 
ders, every handful of ashes sifted ; but of a 
human being the searchers found never a 
trace. Not a bone, not a key, not a knife, 
not a button which could be identified 
as his. Like the smoke which swallowed 
him up, he had disappeared completely and 
forever. 

Is he alive ? I cannot tell. 

But this I know. 

Years afterwards Sidney Blair, head of 
our engineering department, was running a 
line, looking then, as we are looking yet, for 
a coast outlet. 

He took only a flying camp with him,trav- 
230 


Siclone Clark 


elling in the lightest kind of order, camping 
often with the cattlemen he ran across. 

One night, away down in the Panhandle, 
they fell in with an outfit driving a bunch 
of steers up the Yellow Grass trail. Blair 
noted that the foreman was a character. A 
man of few words, but of great muscular 
strength ; and, moreover, frightfully scarred. 

He was silent and inclined to be mo- 
rose at first, but after he learned Blair was 
from McCloud he unbent a bit, and after 
a time began asking questions which in- 
dicated a surprising familiarity with the 
northern country and with our road. In 
particular, this man asked what had become 
of Bucks, and, when told what a big railroad 
man he had grown, asserted, with a sudden 
bitterness and without in any way leading 
up to it, that with Bucks on the West End 
there never would have been a strike. 

Sitting at their camp-fire while their 
crews mingled, Blair noticed in the flicker 
of the blaze how seamed the throat and 
breast of the cattleman were; even his 
sinewy forearms were drawn out of shape. 
He asked, too, whether Blair recollected the 
night the barracks burned; but Blair at 
231 


Siclone Clark 


that time was east of the river, and so ex- 
plained, though he related to the cowboy 
incidents of the fire which he had heard, 
among others the story of Fitzpatrick and 
Siclone Clark. 

“And Fitzpatrick is alive and Siclone is 
dead,” said Blair, in conclusion. But the 
cowboy disputed him. 

“ You mean Clark is alive and Fitzpatrick 
is dead,” said he. 

“ No,” contended Sidney, “ Fitzpatrick is 
running an engine up there now. I saw 
him within three months.” But the cow- 
boy was loath to conviction. 

Next morning their trails forked. The 
foreman seemed disinclined to part from 
the surveyors, and while the bunch was 
starting he rode a long way with Blair, talk- 
ing in a random way. Then, suddenly 
wheeling, he waved a good-bye with his 
heavy Stetson and, galloping hard, was soon 
lost to the north in the ruts of the Yellow 
Gr 



When Blair came in he told Neighbor 
and me about it. Blair had never seen 
Siclone Clark, and so was no judge as to 
his identity; but Neighbor believes yet that 


Siclone Clark 


Blair camped that night way down in the 
Panhandle with no other than the cowboy 
engineer. 

Once again, that only two years ago, 
something came back to us. 

Holmes Kay, one of our staff of sur- 
geons, the man, in fact, who took care of 
Fitzpatrick, enlisted in Illinois and went 
with the First to Cuba. They got in front 
of Santiago just after the hard fighting of 
July ist, and Holmes was detailed for hos- 
pital work among Roosevelt’s men, who 
had suffered severely the day before. 

One of the wounded, a sergeant, had sus- 
tained a gunshot wound in the jaw, and in 
the confusion had received scant attention. 
Kay took hold of him. He was a cowboy, 
like most of the rough-riders, and after his 
jaw was dressed Kay made some remark 
about the hot fire they had been through 
before the block-house. 

“ I’ve been through a hotter before I ever 
saw Cuba,” answered the rough-rider, as 
well as he could through his bandages. 
The remark directed Kay’s attention to the 
condition of his breast and neck, which were 
a mass of scars. 

233 


Siclone Clark 


“ Where are you from?” asked Holmes. 

“ Everywhere.” 

“ Where did you get burned that way ?” 

“ Out on the plains.” 

“ How?” 

But the poor fellow went off into a delir- 
ium, and to the surgeon’s amazement began 
repeating train orders. Kay was paralyzed 
at the way he talked our lingo — and a cow- 
boy. When he left the wounded man for 
the night he resolved to question him more 
closely the next day; but the next day or- 
ders came to rejoin his regiment at the 
trenches. The surrender shifted things 
about, and Kay, though he made repeated 
inquiry, never saw the man again. 

Neighbor, when he heard the story, was 
only confirmed in his belief that the rough- 
rider was Siclone Clark. I give you the 
tales as they came to me, and for what you 
may make of them. 

I myself believe that if Siclone Clark is 
still alive he will one day yet come back to 
where he was best known and, in spite of 
his faults, best liked. They talk of him out 
there as they do of old man Sankey. 

I say I believe if he lives he will one 
234 


Siclone Clark . 


day come back. The day he does will be 
a great day in McCloud. On that day Fitz- 
patrick will have to take down the little tab- 
let which he placed in the brick fa<;ade of 
the hotel which now stands on the site of 
the old barracks. For, as that tablet now 
stands, it is sacred to the memory of Si- 
clone Clark. 




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